Rethinking the 'Religion of Technology' Thesis by …digitool.library.mcgill.ca/thesisfile102850.pdfRethinking the 'Religion of Technology' Thesis by Richard R. Walker Faculty of Religious
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Rethinking the 'Religion of Technology' Thesis
by
Richard R. Walker
Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, Montreal
February 2007
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research of
McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of doctor ofphilosophy.
NOTICE: The author has granted a nonexclusive license allowing Library and Archives Canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the Internet, loan, distribute and sell th es es worldwide, for commercial or noncommercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats.
The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission.
ln compliance with the Canadian Privacy Act some supporting forms may have been removed from this thesis.
While these forms may be included in the document page count, their removal does not represent any loss of content from the thesis.
L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou autres formats.
L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation.
Conformément à la loi canadienne sur la protection de la vie privée, quelques formulaires secondaires ont été enlevés de cette thèse.
Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant.
11
Abstract
The following study is an attempt to ascertain the most adequate way to understand the relationship in modemity between religion and technology. This relationship is first analyzed by looking at a common way in which technology has been categorized and discussed as representing the religion of modemity. The first chapter critically evaluates several popular and scholarly works which contain arguments for understanding that the modern world participates in sorne kind of 'religion oftechnology.' The inadequacies of these arguments are shown to arise from the problematic ways in which they invoke the meanings ofboth religion and technology. The suggestive possibility ofviewing religion as a kind oftechnology leads to a consideration ofhow technology is being understood in the field of the philosophy of technology.
The second chapter discusses the influence and responses to the conflation of technology and religion as manifestations of the same phenomenon in Euro-American philosophy. Influenced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger, this stream of thought takes as axiomatic his contention that "technique is the metaphysics of our time." The currency of the 'religion/technology' philosophy in European thought leads to a critical body ofwork amongst sorne North American philosophers concemed with a practical approach to technology.
In chapters three and four the work oftWo ofthese North American philosophers, Don Ihde and Albert Borgmann, is analyzed to evaluate their responses and reactions to the metaphysical and onto-theological interpretation of technology. Their interpretations contain an inherently religious understanding of modem technology which leads to the conclusion that there is neither religion nor technology in modemity, but only religious technology and technological religion.
The possibilities raised by this state of affairs are explored in the conclusion. The work of these philosophers of technology reveals how the study of religion in modemity wou Id benefit from understanding the quotidian and material way in which religion is manifested technologically and technology religiously. A venues of future research can address issues regarding globalization, cross-cultural technology implementation and how to understand the place of religion in global techno-culture from the development of a new praxis-oriented philosophy oftechnology-religion.
111
Résumé
L'objetif de cette étude est comprendre la relation moderne entre religion et technologie à partir de la manière avec laquelle la technologie est assez spontanément comprise et considérée come 'la'religion de la modernité. Le premier chapitre évalue et critique diverses publications, tant populaires qu'érudites, qui avancent des arguments à l'effet que le monde moderne favoriserait une sorte de 'religion de la technologie.' Les insuffisances de ces arguments résultent des manières problématiques avec lesquelles le sens tant de la religion que de la technologie est présenté. Voir la religion comme une sorte de technologie mène à la question de savoir comment la technologie est comprise dans la philosophie de la technologie.
Le deuxième chapitre analyse les influences et les réactions concernant l'assimilation de la technologie et de la religion dans la philosophie euro-américaine. Sous l'influence du philosophe allemand Martin Heidegger, cette façon de penser s'oriente sur l'affirmation de ce-dernier selon laquelle "la technique est la métaphysique de notre temps." Pareille orientation suscite la critique chez certains philosophes nord-américains soucieux avant tout d'une approche pratique de la technologie.
Les chapitres trois et quatre exposent la pensée de deux de ces philosophes, Don Ihde et Albert Borgmann, dans le but d'évaluer leurs réponses et leurs réactions à une interprétation métaphysique et onto-théologique de la technologie. Leur propre interprétation de la technologie recèle une dimension religieuse indubitable qui conduit à penser que dans la modernité, il n'y a ni religion ni technologie, mais au contraire seulement une technologie religieuse et une religion technologique.
Les possibilités soulevées par cet état de choses sont brièvement analysées dans la conclusion. Les oeuvres de ces philosophes de la technologie révèlent à quel point l'étude de la religion dans la modernité profiterait d'une approche à la fois plus axée sur le quotidien et plus matérielle. Des recherches futures concernant la religion dans ses manifestations technologiques et la technologie dans ses incidences religieuses devraient porter entre autres choses sur des questions concernant la globalisation et l'impact inierculturel de la technologie pour une meilleure compréhension de la religion dans le contexte global de la techno-culture ainsi que pour le développement nécessaire d'une philosophie des rapports entre technologie et religion que traduise une orientation clairement inspirée de la praxis.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost 1 would like to acknowledge and thank my supervisor, Dr. Maurice Boutin. 1 am grateful for his knowledgeable direction and encouragement during my graduate program and while writing my dissertation.
iv
1 would also like to acknowledge the Religious Studies and Graduate Studies faculties at McGill University for offering me funding during my Ph.D. pro gram and for their institutional support throughout my graduate program. As weIl, 1 would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Sheryl Hamilton, with whom 1 had the honor to work with while she was a member of the Art History and Communications Studies department at McGill University.
1 would like to extend a special thanks to my colleagues and friends Dr. Momy Joy and Ms. Melissa Curley whose steadfast support helped me keep my sanity. Dr. Lara Braitstein and Dr. Barbra Clayton and many of my fellow graduate students at the Faculty of Religious Studies were instrumental in my achieving this goal.
1 would like to thank the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary for loaning me office space in the summer of2006. 1 would also like to thank members of the administrative staff of the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill for their friendship and support. As well, 1 would like to acknowledge SRK and his colleagues in Mumbai, lndia for the hours of enjoyment they gave me while working on my dissertation.
My parents, Anne and Russel Walker, have been unstinting in their love and support during my graduate experience and without them it would not have been possible to pursue this goal.
Finally, 1 would like to acknowledge aIl the undergraduate students that 1 had the privilege to teach as an instructor while a graduate student at McGiIl. They inspired and exasperated me in equal measure but ultimately made me glad to have made the choice to follow an academic life.
Contents
Abstract
Résumé
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 - The Religion qua Technology Thesis
1.1 The 'Religion of Technology' - Beginnings 1.2 Religiously Inspired Technology Theories 1.3 Popular 'Religion ofTechnology' Arguments lA The 'Religion ofTechnology' - An Unholy Marriage 104.1 Technology as Quasi-Religion - Faith versus Faith 104.2 Secular Religion and Technological Mysticism 104.3 Technology and Christianity - The Anti-Religious Critique 1.5 Western Religion and Anti-Technology 1.6 The Failure of a 'Religion ofTechnology' Thesis
2 - Europe Versus America: Religion, Technology and Metaphysics
2.1 A New Philosophy for the New World? 2.2 A Brief History of the Philosophy of Technology 2.3 Old World Philosophy - Technology as Religion,
Religion as Technology
3 - Don Ihde: Escape From Technological Determinism
3.1 A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Techno-culture 3.2 Ihde's Technological Hermeneutic 3.3 Ihde's Technological Lifeworld 3.4 Ihde's Onto-theological Body 3.5 Technology - A Secular Spirituality
4 - Albert Borgmann: Technology and Redemption
4.1 Borgmann's World of Technology
v
Il
111
IV
V
VIl
10
10 12 20 30 31 37 44 53 57
61
61 64 70
75
77 84 88 93 96
100
101
4.2 Heidegger's American Heir 4.3 Broken Promises: Modern Technology's Pailed Soteriology 4.4 Material Metaphysics: The Device Paradigm versus Focal
Things and Practices 4.5 The End of Reality 4.6 A Religion of Focal Things and Practices or 'Something
Like Theology'
Conclusion
Bibliography
vi
103 105 109
118 126
133
145
VIl
Abbreviations*
BoT - D. Ihde, 2002. Bodies in Technology.
CoP - D. Ihde, 1986. Consequences ofPhenomenology.
CPD - A. Borgmann, 1992. Crossing the Postmodem Divide.
HOR - A. Borgmann, 1999. Holding On to Reality.
HP - D. Ihde, 1971. Hermeneutic Phenomenology.
LiV - D. Ihde, 1979. Listening and Voice.
PFa - A. Borgmann, 2003. Power Failure.
PPh - D. Ihde, 1993. Postphenomenology.
PTe - D. Ihde, 1993. Philosophy of Technology.
TCCL - A. Borgmann, 1984. Technology and the Character ofContemporary Life.
TeL - D.lhde, 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld.
TePr - D. Ihde, 1997. Technics and Praxis.
* See also Bibliography, pp. 145-157. - Other abbreviations are indicated in Siegfried M. Schwertner, International Glossary of Abbreviationsfor Theology and Related Subjects. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992, xli + 488 p.
1
Introduction
Most people, when asked to define the meaning oftechnology, will give a
familiar answer. The most common answer to this question is that technology is
simply applied science. Modem technology, if it is differentiated from other
forms oftechnology at all, is represented as the inevitable outcome of the
cumulative historical progress ofhuman knowledge. This common understanding
implies that, ifthere is anything unique about modem technology, it is
nonetheless merely an extension of the normal tool-using abilities that initially
differentiated early humans from other primates. In this understanding, modem
technology, while admittedly of a higher order of complexity than in its pre
modem forms, nonetheless remains simply another example of the efficient
human application of instrumental means to achieve human ends.
This instrumental understanding of technology cannot explain the way in
which technology and religion have been repeatedly contrasted, compared and
conflated in twentieth-century scholarship. Throughout much ofthis period the
c1aim that technology is our religion and that faith in the machine is our creed
arose repeatedly. By the end of the twentieth-century this c1aim had appeared in a
wide variety of academic and popular discussions regarding technology and
culture. So much so, that it is possible to identify a 'religion oftechnology' thesis
as a central theme in technology studies in general and even to classify an entire
genre as 'religion oftechnology' works.
2
Studies regarding the religiousness of technology tend to faU short on the
level of critical analyses because they contain problematic understandings
regarding the significance and meaning ofboth religion and technology
especiaUy as they relate to questions of the secular and the modem. In regards to
religion, these claims are usually unable to move beyond problematic notions of
religion which remain conceptuaUy trapped in trying to compare and contrast
technology and technological culture with sorne traditional or substantive ide a of
what 'religion' is - regardless of whether religion itself is understood positively or
negatively.
Most of the attempts to articulate sorne form of the 'religion of
technology' thesis tell us nothing about the religious meaning and significance of
modem technology or of technological culture itself. As well, considering the
congruence of meaning that such a thesis implies for understanding the possible
relations between technology and religion, neither do they give us any insight into
the nature of religion in technological culture. As it has been articulated, the
'religion oftechnology' thesis neither adequately explains modern technology nor
modern religion. The utilization of the category 'religion' to characterize modem
technology has been used either as a way to reject religion or else as a way of
defending one form oftrue religion over another, inauthentic or inadequate form.
Overall, attempts to articulate a 'religion oftechnology' thesis have utilized a
con cep tuaI sleight of hand that appears significant and yet remains empty of
meaning.
3
The following will discuss various manifestations of the religion of
technology thesis as it has been expressed both as an implicit and explicit part of
the general study of technology throughout the twentieth-century. Implicitly this
can be found in the works ofsuch figures as Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) and
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) for whom modern technology is the result of "the
situation in which sin has put man" (Ellul, 1984: 135) and its representations in
media is "the folklore of industrial man"(McLuhan, 2003: xiii). It can also be
found in more formulated forms and appear both in populi st works, which use
religion to reflect on specifie technological practices, and in more scholarly
attempts to prove that technology represents a deficient, inauthentic or irrational
manifestation of a secular, civil or otherwise non-traditional form of religion.
Popular works such as those of Erik Davis and Brian Alexander use religion as a
way to contextualize sorne of the counter-intuitive facts about technological
practitioners such as the fantasies and dreams that push technological
development and influence the potential future of human-technology relations.
More scholarly attempts to articulate a 'religion oftechnology' thesis faH into two
main conflicting streams - one in which technology is accused of not being
enough of a religion, whereas in another it is identified as being too much of one.
Scholarly studies such as those of J. Mark Thomas and William A. Stahl
see modern technology as a deficient, lesser, form of 'real' religion. In these
works, real religion represents a human endeavor that represents higher values
and purposes than those found in the profane reality of technological practices.
For these thinkers, modem technology and the culture it engenders is critiqued
4
and rejected for its failure to adequately represent the higher values found in
'true' religion. While this may justify discussing technology as religion,
comparable but inadequate to other more authentic religions, it does not address
what may be the most important consequence of such an understanding - namely
the problematic assumption which understands religion as primarily represented
by its theoretical or intellectual dimensions and completely ignores its quotidian
reality. Religion is as equally a practical, applied and material endeavor as
technology is, and one question that must be answered is how the practices of
religion differ in kind from technological ones. This is especially important if the
higher 'values and beliefs' oftraditional religions are themselves increasingly
manifested in technological mediums such as telecommunications media and
other new information technologies and are being performed in new,
technologically oriented, ways.
In other scholarly works technology itself is made to be questionable
exactly by its being religious at all. In the work of David F. Noble, extrapolating
from the work ofhistorian Lynn White Jr. (1907-1987), the religiousness of
modern technology is understood as the result of the uncritical continuation of the
religious dreams ofhistorical Christianity. Dreams which, in Noble's view,
continue to virally infect contemporary technological development. Noble's
critique holds that the religion of technology is a negative distortion of the true
meaning and purpose oftechnology. It is technology's religious nature that is
identified as the problem, and Noble's work is a rejection of religion itselfas
much as it is of a religious attitude toward technology.
None ofthese speculations adequately address the relationship in a way
that will allow us to understand how this relates to the common, everyday
experience of technology and religion for human beings in contemporary society.
How does the experience and use oftechnology, whether it be a hammer, a
computer or the utilization of molecular nano-machines, relate to what is meant
by the human experience of religion? The latter would seem too metaphysical
and the former too actual to be legitimately contrasted and compared.
5
Neither do these theories adequately explain how it is that modem
religions have themselves come to be perceived and experienced as simply
another form of human technology - whereby one can stand in for the other on
account of rational appearing criteria of efficiency and effectiveness. The fact is
that in modem techno-culture overt religious rituals and practices, such as ritual
prayer and meditation, are often seen as being in essence no different than
technological solutions to psycho-social problems. One obvious example from
the realm ofpopular and consumer culture is the increasing number of claims that
Eastern meditation and yogic practices are more efficient solutions to the stresses
of modem daily life than the pharmacological use of anti-depressants or
behaviour modification medication. On the other hand, while techno-scientific
solutions to human psychological problems are sometimes being rejected in
favour of spiritual techniques, the search for a technological fix - fast, efficient
and easy - has infiltrated the ways in which modern religion operates.
In a comprehensive study of the variety of possible relationships between
religion and technology in the Judeo-Christian context, Jay Newman's discussion
6
of technology as a natural successor to religion can be seen as an entry into
understanding the ubiquity of the 'religion oftechnology' thesis. In Newman's
work we find the possibility of regarding religion itself as a kind of technology -
which partially helps to explain the continuation ofthis thesis. However,
Newman's work is more concemed with understanding the antagonistic
relationship oftechnology to Western monotheisms and he too fails to adequately
interrogate what our understanding of religion might mean when it is compared,
contrasted and conflated with technology. The key to understanding the
relationship between technology might therefore be more fruitfully pursued by
trying to understand something about the nature oftechnology. Thus, the turn to
an analysis of the philosophy of technology as a way to explore the contradictory
relationship between religion and technology will be both justified and necessary.
Turning to the philosophy of technology as a way of understanding the
possible relations between religion and modem technology is somewhat
revelatory. What even a cursory glance at the field ofphilosophy oftechnology
reveals is a conflict regarding the meaning oftechnology that is strikingly similar
to what has been going on in contemporary religious studies. The core issue
around which both fields struggle is fundamentally an issue regarding essences,
substances or fundamental ontology - what Martin Heidegger had identified as
the onto-theological or metaphysical basis of Western thought. However,
whereas in regards to religion, metaphysical and ontological issues are seen to
threaten the legitimacy and integrity of the secular academic study of religion -
making it seem as if it is merely a continuation of theology - in the area of the
philosophy of technology fear of the specter of metaphysics has been a boon for
exploring sorne of the more practical and material consequences of technological
development and implementation.
7
Heidegger's analysis of the true significance of modem technology
suggests that it is not merely another instance of the human propensity to utilize
tools and machines to achieve particular ends. Rather, his analysis suggests that
its effect in shaping and ordering our world is endowed with such a transcendent.
and seemingly absolute power that only another, equally transcendent, power
could counter its destructive potential and that "only a god can save us
now"(Heidegger, 1976: 277). For this heresy atone, it is easy to see why
Heidegger remains such a controversial figure in modem social and philosophical
thought.
Heidegger also confidently declared that the transcendent status of
technique signified the end of Western philosophy and the death ofmetaphysics
because he saw in modem technological practices the culmination of a
philosophical error that he had identified as central to Western thought since the
time of Plato. Heidegger believed that ever since the Greek Socratic thinkers
Western philosophy had deliberately ignored an important, fundamental
philosophical question: the question ofbeing in the world, of asking what does it
mean for anything 'to be' at aIl, and instead focused on questions related to our
conscious knowledge of the world and descriptions of its workings.
This error would become compounded over time until the main concern of
Western philosophy, whether epistemologically or ontologically, could be
8
characterized as asking the wrong question and seeking the wrong answers. This
wou Id also become the foundations ofmodern scientific thought: what ois' reality
becomes simply a large puzzle for human reason to dissect and discover its inner
mechanisms in order that the natural world be controUed and manipulated for
human benefit. This would become what Heidegger caUed the onto-theological
constitution of Western philosophy - where ontology and theology are
intertwined within the metaphysical. When Heidegger then declared that it was
now technique that supplied the metaphysical, onto-theological basis, of Western
thought he would be branded with the label of understanding technique
transcendentaUy as an absolute and seemingly divine force. In this way,
Heidegger and an entire tradition of thinkers influenced by his analysis, would
identify technique as the metaphysical ~asis of modemity - shaping and forrning
everything that can be said or thought.
For several North American philosophers the ide a that technology can
neither be controlled nor thwarted in its implacable destiny leaves little room for
us to find rational and practical solutions to our technological problems. While
many of these philosophers acknowledge a significant debt to Heidegger - for
they agree as to the significance of technique understood as our peculiarly modern
mode ofbeing - they aU attempt to provide what sorne see as an empirical
approach to understanding technology and our technological condition. For these
thinkers, the estrangement and alienation which Heidegger identified as the
primary human condition in the technological era can be overcome, but only by
renegotiating an understanding oftechnique's metaphysical, or seemingly
religious, stature.
Albert Borgmann and Don Idhe represent two particular attempts to
reconcile the insights of Heidegger with the demands of an American preference
for pragmatic and 'empirical' thought. Borgmann's work most resembles
Heidegger's, particularly in his extension ofHeidegger's conœptualization of
Gestell that represents modem technology's essence in his own 'device
paradigm,' but it adds to Heidegger an overt and unapologetic religious
dimension. Idhe's philosophy is the one which most explicitly rejects
Heidegger's later philosophy oftechnology, preferring Heidegger's early
phenomenological work in Being and Time (1927). Ihde concems himselfwith
the implications of our technologically mediated experiences with objects and
things but his own 'post' phenomenological project also exhibits a religious
dimension.
9
An exploration of the conflict ofmeaning and significance in philosophy
oftechnology-as-metaphysics will gives us some illumination into what
constitutes the actual nature of the intimate relationship between religion and
technology - along the way highlighting sorne new ways to understand the form
and function of religion in a technological culture. One major benefit of this will
be in helping to forge new theoretical tools for the study of religion - ones which
recognize the ways in which religion has become sublated to, and integrated with,
technology in the contemporary and future worlds.
10
Chapter 1
The Religion qua Technology Thesis
1.1 The 'Religion ofTechnology' - Beginnings
If anything was unconditionally believed in and worshipped during the last two centuries [ ... ] it was the machine; the machine and the universe were identified, linked together as they were by the formulae of the mathematical and physical sciences; and the service of the machine was the principal manifestation of faith and religion [ ... ] Only as a religion can one explain the compulsive nature of the urge toward mechanical development without regard for the actualoutcome of the development in human relations themselves [ ... ] (Mumford, 1963:365)
In his book Technics and Civilization, first published in 1934, Lewis
Mumford (1900-1978) made the above claim that 'only as a religion' can we
understand the modem obsession with mechanical development and technological
mastery. That claim regarding modern humanity's relations to technology will be
repeated throughout much of the twentieth-century with the same problematic use
of religion as a trope signifying a form of mental and intellectuallack - in other
words, irrational belief. Religion, in this commonly held view, is understood as
the manifestation of unconditional belief and compulsive behaviour which has no
practical regard for the human consequences of its acts. This is how religion is
invoked in many 'religion oftechnology' arguments and primarily as a way to
criticize modem culture's relations to technology. Such invocation ofmeaning
remains problematic due to its inability to reconcile the historical and semantic
contradictions between this understanding of religion and a common
understanding of technology as applied reason. The history of defining modem
11
culture's relations to technology as a religion fails to adequately account for the
significance of such a contradiction.
Lewis Mumford's work established early on sorne of the main themes in
the historical and philosophical study oftechnology in the twentieth-century-
inc1uding the uncritical ide a of a 'religion oftechnology.' While not the first to
do so, Mumford's work also helped establish the argument that with the rise of
the modern period the machine became both the proof of humanity' s success in
taking control of the world and the main metaphor whereby the operations of the
world itse1f are to be understood. In this way, it is the inhumanness of the
mechanistic worldview that leads to the dystopian c1aim that modern humanity
has become disenchanted and alienated from meaningful participation in the
world. In part, the disenchantment thesis c1aims that historically technological
development and creation were initially moored in the foundations of religion
which provided sorne sort of direction for implementation and use. Founder of
sociology, Max Weber (1864-1920) was the first to actually use the phrase
'Entzauberung der Welt' in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1958: 105) -though in a different context and with a different intent.
Against Marcel Gauchet's tendicious interpretation ofthis phrase as meaning a
way out of religion, French sociologist Jean-Paul Will aime prefers to understand
'Entzauberung' as 'démagification' - not 'désenchantement' of the world. 1
Which is a more accu rate interpretation ofWeber's phrase that coincides with the
critique of technological culture as being mechanistic and mundane.
1 Catherine Halpern, "Faut-il encore lire Max Weber? Entretien avec Jean-Paul Willaime, sociologue": journal Sciences Humaines 127 (December 2006): 52-53.
12
In the secular, scientific world-view technology is to be understood as
simply the product of rational processes. However, as Leo Marx has noted, the
idea oftechnology as applied science has a very recent history; it arose partly as a
result of the desire by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rationalist philosophers
to utilize technological advancements as proof of secular social and political
theories (Marx, 1997: 970). Much ofthis was based on the desire to believe that
religion tout court had ended, or was at least struck a mortal blow, with the
European enlightenment and the rise to dominance of the modern, secular and
scientific worldview. However, as Lewis Mumford's work demonstrates, the
sheer speed and ubiquity with which technological progress had spread helped to
promote the ide a that the modern world had not actually lost religion, but instead
that the religious impulse had found new foci in the products of modernity. In
Mumford's case, this religiosity had become oriented around a faith in the
efficacy and superiority of the machine. In this way, Mumford was one of the
first twentieth-century scholars to put forth the idea that technology represents the
religion of the modern world.
1.2 Religiously Inspired Technology Theories
A similarly negative 'religion oftechnology' thesis is also implied in the
works of sorne of the major figures in the twentieth-century study of technology -
particularly when the religious orientation of the critic is brought to the fore. Two
primary examples are Jacques Ellul and Marshall McLuhan: while their primary
analyses oftechnological culture do not explicitly c1aim it represents a type of
13
religion, their arguments regarding tI:e dangers of technological culture only truly
make sense when contextualized alongside their religious beliefs. It is important
to note that this fact does not suggest that the religious backgrounds and
presuppositions ofthese major figures in the study oftechnology inherently
distorted their evaluations of technology; it should not negate the importance of
these critiques oftechnological culture by reducing them to mere religiously
inspired critiques. Rather, this establishes an initial entry point for beginning to
understand the wide variety of ways in which a 'religion oftechnology' thesis has
appeared in academic thought. The most illuminating aspect of the religiously
inspired critiques of technology is that they make it clear that religion, whether
normatively or negatively understood, implicitly haunts the study oftechnology in
the twentieth century. The recognition ofthis fact provides the first indications of
the multiplicity of ways in which religion and technology are intertwined in
modemity. Therefore, the following discussion should be understood as
indicative, not as definitive.
While Mumford felt that the 'mechanical faith' he had identified as central
to modemity was gradually coming to an end with the rise of organic (i.e.,
cybemetic) technologies in the early twentieth century (Mumford, 1963: 365-68),
French theorist Jacques Ellul believed that Mumford's understanding was too
limited (Ellul, 1964: 42). Instead of simply faith in the machine, Ellul felt that
technology itself truly represents the sacred of twentieth century culture.
In his trilogy of works critiquing technology and contemporary culture, La
Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle (1954; English 1964), Le système technicien
14
(1977: English 1980) and Le bluff technologique (1988: English 1990), Ellul
argues for a dire vision of a humanity enslaved to technological thinking and
practices. For Ellul, modem technology and the society it produces is the result of
the progressive standardization and utilization of technical means to achieve ends
disassociated from anything human. Modem technology is its own end unto itself
and h~nce a soulless and implacable force which contemporary humanity has
become subordinate to. For Ellul this 'rule oftechnology' is so ail pervasive and
encompassing in shaping and controlling human life that it has achieved sacred
status in regards to how humanity relates to it. As the English translator of The
Technological Society Robert Merton phrased it in his introduction, for Ellul
"since the religious object is that which is uncritically worshipped, technology
tends more and more to become the new god." (1964: xi)
Ellul' s work has been widely read and cited and, as we will see, he has
canonical status as one of the founders of the contemporary philosophy and study
oftechnology. However, even if none ofhis three book-Iength treatrnents of
technological culture explicitly points towards religion as either the cause of, or
cure for, the technological problem in many ofhis more theological works it is
abundantly clear that he sees technological culture as both idolatrous and
demonic. For him, technological culture comprises the antithesis to Christian
practice and belief, and his critical analysis and implicit articulation of a 'religion
oftechnology' argument should be understood with reference ta his more
theological works.
15
A convert to the Protestant Reformed Church of France, Ellul believed
that it was his Christian duty to bear witness to his beliefs through his actions and
practices (1989: 1-9). His entire critique regarding technology understood as a
distorted form ofpractice should be seen in relation to this religious stance on the
proper (i.e., religious) way ofbeing and acting in the world. For Ellul, our
contemporary situation is ultimately the result of Adam's fall from the state of
grace in the biblical Eden (1984: 135). In "Technique and the Opening Chapters
of Genesis" he states that technology "is the product of the situation in which sin
has put man; it is inscribed exclusively in the fallen world; it is uniquely part of
the fallen world; it is a product of necessity and not of human
freedom"(1984: 135). In "The Relationship Between Man and the Creation in the
Bible," the impetus behind ElIul's negative appraisal of the future effects of
technological development arises clearly from his Christian eschatological beliefs:
1 am completely clear in this regard - the devastation of the world, the ecological disaster that awaits us, is not only the result ofbelief in the technological system, but it follows, above all, from the fact that man no longer believes in the creator God [ ... ] We are thus assured that the earth will be taken away from us, from us as the strong, the exploiters of the world, the technicians, the "improvers," the inventors, the conquerors of the galaxies. (1984: 151-152)
While Ellul shares the dystopian view of technological domination and potential
devastation other classical philosophers of technology have put forth, his
references to Christian mythology make it clear that for him the CUITent
technological problem is the result of a religious cause and hence also its potential
solution. Technological culture represents a religious competitor to Christian
16
religion and therefore can be understood as a form of religion itself. As he says in
the Technological Society, whereas "it was formerly believed that technique and
religion were in opposition and represented two totally different dispensations"
now we are experiencing "nothing less than the subjection ofmankind's new
religious life to technique."(423)
Another influential thinker in regards to technology whose religious
background has influenced his work is Marshall McLuhan. However, according
to Eric McLuhan's introduction to The Medium and the Light: Reflections on
Religion - a collection ofhis father's works discussing his views on religion -
Marshall McLuhan's youthful conversion to Catholicism did not overtly define
his work. As weIl, McLuhan repeatedly refuted accusations that his work on
media technology was inordinately indebted to his religious beliefs (1999: xix
xx). Despite these refusaIs, the new orthodoxy in McLuhan studies which is
being touted by writers on technology and culture such as Neil Postman and
Arthur Kroker reduces McLuhan's entire oeuvre to merely "age-old Christian
humanism in modern dress" (xix). Whether this is a fair assessment or not, the
fact remains that McLuhan's theory oftechnological media se en through the lens
of his religious beliefs is indicative of an implicit relationship between religion
and technology in his work.
That technology is central to shaping the modern human condition is a
primary conclusion to make from reading McLuhan's work - especially in
regards to the relationship between concepts and perceptions. Primarily in his
three best-known contributions to media and communication studies, The
17
Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964) and The Medium is the
Massage (1967) McLuhan puts forth an understanding ofhow technology
fundamentally shapes and forms individu al and social perceptions and acts.
Technology, especially media technologies, fundamentally effect the ways in
which we see, hear and understand our world regardless of what meanings they
may purport to contain. Conceptual content is subordinate to the technical means
through which it is perceived - in fact, the means can and should be understood to
have more of an impact than the meaning of the content (i.e., the medium is the
message). While this seems to suggest a kind of demonic technological force that
distorts and even destroys the authentic and real ends of instrumental practices, in
fact it is an acknowledgement of a religious truth McLuhan believed in with
regards to his own understanding of the Catholic faith.
McLuhan's understanding of religion is that "faith is not simply an act of
the mind, that is, a matter of ideology or thought" or even of "belief or trust,
although it is usually mistaken for these things" (1999: xv). Rather, "faith is a
mode of perception, a sense like sight or hearing or touch and as real and actual as
these, but in a spiritual rather than a bodily sense"(1999: xv). Such an
understanding offaith as a sense 'like sight or hearing or touch' places religion
clearly within the realm of the sensory apparatus of the human - a natural
technique ofhuman beings. Since McLuhan also most famously acknowledges
the embodied relationship we have to our technologies - that they are always
extensions of our cognitive or perceptual powers - this makes offaith a source
through which we experience the world, and hence a kind of technology itself. In
18
this sense, faith for McLuhan is itself a medium; it is faith as practice and action
which is primary over any theological formulation and it is no surprise that the
contemporary technological world is in opposition to this understanding of faith.
In a series of conversations with Pierre Babin, McLuhan once said:
In a certain way, l a1so think that this cou1d be the time of the Antichrist. When electricity allows for the simultaneity of all information for every human being, it is Lucifer's moment. He is the greatest electrical engineer. Technically speaking, the age in which we live is certainly favourable to an Antichrist. Just think: each pers on can instantly be tuned to a "new Christ" and mistake him for the real Christ. At su ch times it becomes crucial to hear properly and to tune yourself in to the right frequency.(1999: 209)
Tuning oneselfto the 'right frequency' in order to 'properly' ascertain what is
true or real is put over and against the domination of the technological medium
through which false truth is spread. The differentiation between percepts and
concepts that is at the core ofMcLuhan's understanding of religion is also at the
core ofhis understanding oftechnological culture (McLuhan, 1999: xix). It is his
understanding of the nature of perception, of which faith is to be counted as
primary, as opposed to intellectually held beliefs or concepts, that lies at the
centre of his analysis of media culture. Acknowledging this makes it clear that
technology as mere medium is pitted against the true message achieved through
religious faith, and that may have implicitly effected McLuhan's work on media
technology.
The relationship between religion and technology is much more
ubiquitous than merely implicit in the work of these two figures in twentieth
century studies of technology. A fuller discussion would include the works of
19
many other scholars, such as George Grant (1918-1988) whose own discussions
on technology and culture were strongly influenced by his own religious beliefs
(1969,1986). It is revealing that many of the first works which began to treat the
philosophical study of technology as a specifie area of study in late twentieth
century North America, such as Carl Mitcham's and Robert Mackey's edited
volume Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of
Technology (1972, 1983), Langdon Winner's The Whale and the Reactor: The
Searchfor Limits in An Age ofHigh Technology (1986) and Frederick Ferré's
introductory text to the Philosophy ofTechnology (1988), aIl have significant
sections focused on the relations between religion and technology and whose
authors had significant religious beliefs.
In a revealing example, the Mitcham and Mackey book was followed by a
subsequent volume focusing specifically on Christian theology and technology.
In the preface to the edited volume on Theology and Technology: Essays in
Christian Analysis and Exegesis (1984) Carl Mitcham states that "whereas the
original anthology had tolerantly included religious issues within the scope of
technology as a philosophical problem the present collection wishes to tum the
tables and present philosophieal issues as the outgrowth of theological
understandings"(l984: v-vi). The reason is that in regards to technology the
"central question, even in the philosophy oftechnology, is ultimately theological
in character" (1984: v).
This theme arises repeatedly in various other works, most notably in
Albert Borgmann's claim that thinking about teehnology is 'something like
20
theology,' and it soon becomes clear that the philosophy oftechnology in sorne
contexts has taken on the status of the theology of a modern technological religion
(more on this in chapter two). What these philosophical reflections on technology
with their underlying religious understanding do not achieve is to fully explain or
explicate how we are to understand what technology means, and also what
religion is in relation to technology, when religion and religious beliefs are the
natural companions to the study of technology.
1.3 Popular 'Religion of Technology' Arguments
The number ofworks which explicitly conflate religion and modem
technology is remarkably large and any review of the current literature must
necessarily be incomplete. The commonality of the overt thesis that technology is
the dominant religion of our time might initially be revealed by a look at sorne of
the popular works which explicitly make these claims. Many ofthese works
appear late in the twentieth century in reaction to the vast technological
developments and rapid implementation of computer and infonnation
technologies in late modernity. Explicit in these discussions is the thesis that the
narratives surrounding computer development (i.e., the internet, the web, and/or
cyberspace) are either continuations ofhistorical religious beliefs and practices, or
else represent a new manifestation of religion in the modern world. Religion is
also utilized as a kind of shorthand or metaphorical trope whereby the cultural and
individual reactions they inspire, such as those surrounding bio-technologies, can
be categorized as a way of comprehending the intense, almost fanatic, interest that
surrounds them. In both cases, religion is understood as a symbolic system that
orders and shapes how human beings use and relate to technology.
21
Sorne works written for popular audiences, but with academic interest,
include several books written by writers for Wired magazine. Seen as the 'bible'
of contemporary techno-culture, Wired magazine (which began publishing both in
print and online editions in 1993) is a fountain of information regarding popular
understandings of the meaning and significance oftechnological culture. For the
first ten years of its existence Wired magazine c1aimed on its masthead Marshall
McLuhan and his approach to media technology as their 'patron saint.' On their
own, popular technology magazines like Wired contain many of the explicitly
stated dreams and fears of popular techno-culture. This is indicative of sorne kind
of religiosity infusing popular commentary on technological culture. Two
contributors to Wired magazine have made explicit c1airns about the existence of a
'religion oftechnology:' Eric Davis and Brian Alexander.
Eric Davis' Techgnosis: My th, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of
Information (1998) is a study of the relationship between computer technology
and Western counter-culture or esoteric thought traditions. Davis relates
contemporary 'cyber-culture' with the 'alternative reality tradition' that
sociologist of new religions Robert S. Ellwood first described in Religious and
Spiritual Groups in Modern America (1973). Ellwood's thesis which Davis,
perhaps unwittingly, adopts is that an alternative or counter-tradition has existed
alongside the more dominant and more well-known thought traditions of the West
throughout mu ch of its history. Most importantly, such a counter~tradition has at
22
its core the pursuit of mystical self-knowledge, a Gnostic nature, and according to
Davis, "gnosis fonns one of the principal threads in the strange and magnificent
tapestry of Western esotericism"(80). Davis traces the origins of contemporary
computer culture through a look at examples from the history of Western
esotericism. The nascent beginnings of cyber-culture can be seen in everything
from the adoptions by early hermeticists of the pseudo-Greek writings of Hermes
Trismegistus, the early thought 'machines' ofmedieval thinker Raymond Lull, the
development of ars memoria by Giordano Bruno, the alchemical and mechanical
speculations ofproto-scientists Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, nineteenth
century spiritualist techniques like those of Aleister Crowley, the adoption by
mid-twentieth century Beat poets of Buddhist ideas and metaphors of reality as a
web of interconnections as weIl as the theological speculations of Catholic
philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his idea of the Noosphere. Davis
even shows how the development of computers as a textual-linguistic medium is
effected by the playing of Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy role-playing
games by early computer developers, which makes Dayis' contention that there
exists large number of 'techno-pagans' in the computer development industry
seem a natural outcome. Davis argues that the creation of a contemporary 'cyber
culture' has had sorne of its conceptual origins and much of its spiritual impetus
in these alternative and esoteric religious beliefs and philosophies, especially as
they were manifested in counter-culture movements in the late nineteen-sixties in
such places as California and the Silicon-valley, the birth-place of cyber-culture.
23
At the same time, Davis' study highlights the historical connection
between the nature ofreligious knowledge and the nature of information itself. A
confluence of meaning between the technologies of information manipulation and
religion as a symbolic-linguistic information system currently suffuses the ways
in which modem technological and religious imaginings intertwine in regards to
computer technologies. Davis' work reveals the factual existence of a spiritually
oriented mysticism that infuses current cultural narratives about technology - and
particularly narratives and metaphors used in relation to information technologies.
Such a mystical spiritualism effects naturally how these technologies are
imagined by sorne of their users but also how they are conceptualized, designed
and implemented by their originators and developers.
The study of the relationship between computer technologies and religion
has formed an academic sub-discipline of its own - especially as regards the
internet as a medium for traditional religions and religious expression in general.
This sub-field has spawned a wide variety ofworks studying religion 'online'
ranging from works like those of Tom Beudoin's Virtual Faith: The Irreverent
Spiritual Quest of Generation X (1993), Jeffrey Zaleski's The Soul of
Cyberspace: How New Technology is Changing our Spiritual Lives (1997) and
Vincent Mosco's The Digital Sublime: My th, Power and Cyberspace (2004) to
the more sociologically oriented works of Brenda E. Brasher's Give me that
Online Religion (2001) and editors Lome L. Dawson's and Douglas Cowan's
recent collection of articles on Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet
(2004). The recent creation of an entire academic journal devoted to this subject,
24
the Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet (2005: http://www.online.uni
hd.de/), concretizes this area of study into a distinctly recognizable sub-field of
the general study of religion. Despite their limited focus on only the .
technologically mediated nature of religion when it is communicated in these new
mediums, aU these studies represent cyberspace as more than merely a new
medium of communication. Underlying the study of religion online is an
understanding of a new conceptual and physical 'space' in which technology and
religion are somehow intimately combined.
Most of these works are concemed with looking at religions as they are
traditionally conceived, both in their nonnative fonns such as Catholicism or
Islam and as new religious movements like Wicca and other 'new-age' religions.
For the most part they are concemed only with questions regarding how religions
are adapting themselves to the new communications medium as modes of
spreading their beliefs and practices. However, the ease with which the
colonization of 'cyberspace' by religion has taken place suggests a much more
congenial relationship between religion and technology than such an
understanding of media technology as mere nieans would suggest. The
metaphorical topos with which this new space is being conceptualized can itself
be understood as religious and these works ail represent a commonly held, but
often uncritically evaluated, idea that there is something inherently religious, and
even transcendent, about the virtual no-space commonly referred to as
, cyberspace.'
25
This idea may lie in the origins of the name created by science fiction
writer William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer (1984) where he described
cyberspace as:
... a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions [ ... ] a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. (69)
In the novel's storyline focused on the lives of computer hackers in a
technologically obsessed future, this non-space is inhabited not only with the
disembodied minds of computer uses but also with various god-like figures taken
from the mythology of the Haitian religion ofVodou. Gibson's fictional vision
has been replicated in dozens of movies and novels in the late twentieth century
and become both genre specific (i.e., science fiction's 'cyberpunk' books, and in
films like The Matrix) as weIl as general in common word usage when describing
networked computers. Despite its fictional origins and inaccurate way of
describing the reality of the very material and embodied interactions humans have
with computer technologies, the word 'cyberspace' has become the dictionary
definition ofthe way in which the "forum in which the global electronic
communications network operates"(Canadian Oxford English Dictionary, 1998:
348). The clearly symbolic and metaphorical nature of the idea of cyberspace is
easily comparable to those ideas regarding other-worldly spaces which suffuse
religious mythologies such as the Christian heaven, Hindu nirvana or the Buddhist
pure-land. Thus, the underlying theme of cyberspace as a religious, transcendent
space is a natural extension of original fictional and subsequent dictionary
26
meanings and of religious myths. The word cyberspace and its reification in
popular culture indicates sorne kind of a conflation in the popular mind between
technology and religion - of course, without any kind of satisfying explanation
forwhy such a conflation is possible or what it means for our understanding of
religion or technology in contemporary culture.
One attempt to address this lack is by science historian Margaret
Wertheim in The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to
the Internet (1999). Wertheim attempts to show that it is a misguided and
dangerous historical mistake when cyberspace is unconsciously treated as a kind
of quasi-religious topographical space. Through a comprehensive account of the
history of spatial representations in Western thought, Wertheim shows how the
immaterial, conceptual realm of cyberspace could be seen as a continuation of
medieval Christian notions regarding the kingdom of god. Tracing the history of
concepts of space from the medieval idea of two dimensions of material and
immaterial reality through the rise of Renaissance perspectivism, Gallilean
cosmology, Einsteinian relativistic space and twentieth-century quantum physics
hyper-spatiality, Wertheim argues that cyberspace is merely a return to the mind
body dualism of earlier medieval spatiality. Looking at much of the recent
literature, both popular and scientific, in regards to computer technologies
Wertheim notes that they reflect a distaste for this-worldly embodiment and a
sacralizing of the immateriality represented in narratives about virtuality,
downloading minds, and even of the indeterminate nature ofhuman identity and
of the ontological nature of intelligence.
27
Wertheim is explicitly dismissive ofthese 'cyber-fantasies' claiming that
they represent a desire for transcendence from this-worldly struggles to a
heavenly world where ail of our desires and dreams can be simulated and made
virtually real. Wertheim rejects cyber-religion, not for its inaccuracy as a way of
conceptualizing human experiences with computer technologies, but because it
represents a false or irresponsible kind of religion. She says that "unlike genuine
religions that make ethical demands on their followers, cyber-religiosity has no
moral precepts [ ... J. It is this desire for the personal payoff of a religious system
without any of the social demands that 1 find so troubling." (281-82)
Wertheim's critique contains elements ofboth the 'not enough' religion
and 'too much' religion criticisms that characterize other more explicitly framed
discussions of a 'religion oftechnology' thesis (more on this # 1.4). It also
contains an unarticulated rejection of the underlying humanist philosophy that
cyber-religious dreaming represents: the religiosity of philosophies labeled trans
humanist and post-humanist. Whether identified as such by their authors or by
others, post-humanist and trans-humanist philosophies can be seen to be the
inevitable outgrowths ofhumanism - especially as articulated by the American
Humanist Society in several manifestos put out throughout the twentieth century.
In these manifestos technology is best understood as the natural successor - not
the competitor - ofhistorical and traditional religion (see Humanist Manifesto 1 &
2: 1973).
In "Gnosis in Cyberspace? Body, Mind and Progress in Posthumanism"
Oliver Krüger, author of the book Virtualitiit und Unsterblichkeit: Die Vision en
28
des Posthumanismus (2004), differentiates between those philosophies which are
calIed, or which calI themselves, 'trans-human' and those that are labeled 'post
human': whereas the former is the transcendence ofhuman limitations through
this-worldly embodied technological enhancement the latter is a transcended
disembodiment beyond human being itself through an escape into a virtual world.
While his own preferences may lead him to deny that post-humanist ideology is
based on a Gnostic religious disdain for an evil, or even sinful, world, Krüger's
work nonetheless notes the religious underpinnings ofboth post-humanist and
trans-humanist ideas (2005: 67). Most importantly, the relation ofthese ideas to
religion makes clear how closely allied technology and religion are to what it
means to be humanist.
In Brian Alexander's account of the popularization ofutopian
biotechnological narratives in mainstream scientific circles, Rapture: How
Biotech became the New Religion (2003), these new technologically-oriented
humanisms are presented as if they were a new religion. The transcendence of
biologicallimitations Alexander's 'rapture' represents is found in the popular
scientific search for life-extension technologies, genetic engineering and cloning,
pharmacological technologies, and other body and mind enhancing techniques to
create superior and potentially immortal human beings. As Alexander notes, what
used to be fringe ideas in science-fiction, science-obsessed individuals and
futurist groups like the Extropian society, have now become mainstream science
represented most significantly by the narratives surrounding the Ruman Genome
Project, stem cell research, and genetic engineering in agriculture and animal
husbandry.
29
Like the cyber-religiosity Wertheim decries, Alexander's discussion of
biotechnological religion suggests a continuation or revival of Western religious
desires to transcend, overcome and surpass this-worldly limitations. The
humanist orientations of these religions are obvious in the lack of any other
worldly power bestowing these gifts upon us; through science and technology
human beings will become their own saviours and gods. Although the category of
religion contextualizes the intensity and fanaticism that accompanies these
technological developments, it is utilized by Alexander as a kind of joumalistic
shorthand without cri tic al analysis.
What is surprising about these popular 'religion oftechnology' arguments
is that their pairing of religion and technology inevitably challenge our common,
everyday understandings of what we mean by both technology and religion - so
much so that it is hard to recognize their subject matter as pertaining to our
common understanding of the topics at aU. This odd state of affairs becomes even
more apparent when those scholars who argue explicitly for the existence of a
religion of technology in modem culture are addressed. In these works, either the
meaning of religion must be multiplied in order to include hidden or inauthentic
fonus, or else ignored entirely in favour of the argument that the relationship
between religion and modem technology constitutes an unholy marri age that has
existed for centuries.
30
1.4 The 'Religion of Technology' - An Unholy Marriage
In the work of William Stahl, J. Mark Thomas and David F. Noble there is
an explicit attempt to argue that technology is the religion of our time - albeit one
that remains hidden, inadequate, and even dangerous. United by the common
methodological practice of attempting to reveal the hidden religious myths,
meanings and significances behind modem technologies development and
implementation these scholars represent the most obvious attempts to argue the
religion oftechnology thesis. For these writers, the revelation of the hidden
religious meanings which create our religion of technology is so radical that to
merely reveal them at ail is to reveal an insidious truth about modern culture's
relationship to technology.
For Stahl and Thomas the religious nature which defines modem
technology is without the transcendent structure and ultimate meaning that real or
authentic forms of religions have. In what can be defined as 'not enough religion'
arguments, they attempt to articulate what Wertheim only implied, namely that
technological religion lacks the focus on communal responsibility, philosophical
sophistication and concem for ultimate values that real religions do. Whereas, in
Noble's case, the religion oftechnology should be understood as being 'too much
religion,' he argues more fully and generally than Wertheim that this religion is
merely a continuation of out-moded and dangerous religious ideas and beliefs that
come from the history of Christianity and its intimate relation to the history of
technology. However, in Stahl's work, the danger cornes from technology's
quasi-religious status and its challenge to 'true' religion.
31
1.4.1 Technology as Quasi-Religion - Faith versus Faith
Interpreted as quasi-religions, scientism and technicism reveal their demonic character, elevating an authentic element of existence to the who le. As forces which swallow up both creation and meaning in the threat of complete annihilation and absurdity, they must be resisted in the struggle between faith and faith. (Thomas, 1990: 102)
1. Mark Thomas desires to reveal the dangers of technology in modem
culture by showing how our contemporary relationship to it is religious in nature.
However, this religion should not be understood to represent a real or authentic
religion but rather a quasi-religion which Thomas refers to as 'technicism.' It is a
distortion of real religion because the 'ultimate' meaning which technology
represents is finite and fallible, whereas authentic religions represent meaningful
symbolic relationships which point to a transcendent, transformative reality that is
truly adequate for raising human beings beyond their limits - thereby supplying
them with existentially authentic purpose.
In "Are Science and Technology Quasi-Religions?"(1990) and in Ethics
and Technoculture (1987) Thomas adopts the theological critique of
contemporary culture's religious relationship to technology and science of
influential German-American theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965). Tillich's
influence on North American theology is substantial and his definition of religion
as 'ultimate concern' has been one of the major definitions to have shaped and
formed the North American discipline ofieligious studies itself. However, the
restrictions his substantive interpretation of the meaning of religion imposes are
apparent in the problematic interpretation oftechnology as a quasi-religion.
32
According to Thomas, in order for something to be classified as a quasi
religion four criteria must be met. First, there must already exist a clearly
recognizable 'religious dimension' or quality to human existence which is
identified as such. According to him, a religious dimension ofhuman existence
could include concepts such as Rudolph Otto's 'the holy', Mircea Eliade's 'the
order' and Paul Tillich's 'ultimate meaning'(1990: 93). Ali ofthese concepts
share an understanding of the meaning of religion as something that is
reéognizable and identifiable as such. The identification of a religious essence is
necessary in order to allow overtly non-religious phenomenon to be identified as
merely appearing to signify this religious quality or dimension.
The second criteria is that the society in which a quasi-religion appears
must be ideologically secularist, not merely secular, in order that a space is
available for non-religious phenomenon to operate symbolically in the same way
symbols do religiously. The third criteria is that the phenomenon must not be a
pseudo-religion - which Thomas and Tillich understand as containing an aspect
of inauthenticity based on an intentionally deceptive impersonation of real
religion (i.e., for tax purposes or for political manipulation). Hence, quasi
religion must be non-volitional- it do es not name itselfreligion. Its quasi
religious nature is manifest through those symbols which carry religious meaning
and from which its religiousness must be interpreted.
The most important criteria, according to Thomas, is its seemingly
transcendent character: "It must refer things not simply to a relational context
33
within which they may be perceived and perhaps manipulated, but within which
they gain an ultimate significance and meaning" (1990: 94-95). This final criteria
is based strictly on Paul Tillich's definition of religion as that which concerns
human beings in their entirety or their 'ultimate concerns.' It is important to note
that, for Tillich and Thomas, neither technology nor science in their authentic
forms can be defined as quasi-religions but only when they are distorted as
'scientism' or 'technicism.' As Thomas says, "scientism and technicism are not
identical to science and technology;" only when they are distorted by "the
elevation of one dimension ofbeing to a hegemonic imperialism over ail others"
do they become quasi-religious (1990: 97-98). In regards to technological
religion, this is when one aspect oftechnology, such as efficiency, dominates not
only all forms of technology but aIl other disciplines and realms of a culture as
weIl, i.e., art and religion proper.
According to Tillich's lecture "Logos und Mythos der Technik" (1927,
English 1988), technology as "the adjusting of means to purpose" is a natural
phenomenon because purposes are realized in natura} processes (where there is
an inherent unit y ofmeans and ends). Tillich understands nature teleologically
and sees it as naturally operating technically by using various 'cunning' means to
achieve its ends - including the creation of the human mind, "thereby giving the
spirit the possibility of coming into existence and beginning a new world age of a
completely different kind - the age oftechnology"(1988: 52). According to
Thomas, for Tillich "technology belongs to the 'self creativity oflife under the
34
dimension of spirit'" where 'spirit' is understood as the "unit y of life-power and
life in meanings"( 1987: 7).
With the human a new form of technology emerges, one in which ends
and means are separated. Instead of ends following organically from means,
Tillich felt that now humanity "determines the end and seeks out the means. And
when the end is achieved, then the means becomes insignificant. And it creates
objects that have no other meaning than that of the purpose for which they were
created"(1988: 52). This is the era of the technological worldview we live in
now, but this is not yet the realm oftechnology operating as a quasi-religion.
Sorne forms ofhuman technology are extensions ofthe inherent purposes of
nature and protect, preserve and develop the natural world; Tillich inc1udes
technologies of medicine, psychotherapy, military defense, economics and
commercial processes, and even administrative technologies in which "ail that has
developed itself in the life process is unfolded"(53). Following the se are
technologies which "give spirit the possibility of coming into existence" such as
the musical instrument, graphie art material, books, movies and radio - where
technology is "directly interdependent with the spirit and gives it new forms of
existence"(53). These good forms oftechnology due to the union of spirit with
purpose create technologies which are liberating and redemptive for humanity.
However, this is not the dominant form oftechnology in modem times.
Rather technologies in which the ends-means distinction is obliterated and spirit's
purpose is lost defines the 'technological age.' This is technology that "creates
systems determined only by the pUrpose they are to serve and uses material that is
35
completely foreign to this purpose. It does not develop, rather it destroys living
nexuses" (54). Instead of technologies extending the telos ofnature and
incorporating spirit's purposes, the tools themselves become ail the meaning and
purpose there is - everything is reduced to simply the material from which the
technologies are created. Tillich conc1udes this lecture with the following:
Technology has transformed the world, and this transformed world is our world, and no other. Vpon it we must build; and more than hitherto we must incorporate technology into the ultimate meaning oflife, knowing weIl that if technology is godlike, if it is creative, if it is liberating, it is still demonic, enslaving, and destructive.(60)
In regards to technology then, both Thomas and Tillich understand it as an
essentially ambiguous, at best neutral, phenomenon but with the inherent potential
to be in service to either legitimate or illegitimate religion. Technology only
becomes a destructive quasi-religion with the "elevation of one dimension of
being to a hegemonic imperialism over ail others" (Thomas, 1990: 97). This is
the case wh en its ultimate concern is "the progressive analysis and transformation
of nature into a realm of human artifice" where "usefulness and utility are
established as the ultimate standards for life" and for humanity itself (98).
For Tillich and Thomas, this 'ultimate standard' and the telos it represents
is in direct contradiction to religion proper which represents the authentic
manifestation of spirit in the world. It is not simply because the ultimate concern
of science and technology displaces that of religion (this would be more of the
traditional understanding of the religion versus science-technology conflict) it is
because it replaces the ultimate concern with one which is empty and without
meaning. This is why Tillich and Thomas c1aim that technology cannot be a true
36
manifestation of 'spirit,' and therefore is merely a quasi-religion (Thomas, 1990:
97). Technology, in this view, fails to re-unite alienated humanity with 'spirit' -
something that art and religion traditionally achieved through syrnbols and
metaphors that more authentically represented spirit's manifestation in the world.
The interpretation of a religion of technology as a quasi-religion requires a
difference between real and inauthentic religions - thus creating a hierarchy, or
order of legitimacy, amongst the various possibilities of religious expression.
The definition of a quasi-religion is utilized to legitimate one religious expression
over an other. Hence, the technology as quasi-religion argument should be
understood as an explicitly stated forrn of what is only implicit in many other
discussions of the relationship between religion and technology; it becomes an
example of inter-religious conflict where one forrn of faith is pitted against
another. At this point it is only necessary to note that this makes technology and
religion somehow comparable phenomena and only different manifestations of
one and the same thing.
37
1.4.2 Secular Religion and Tecbnological Mysticism
As practice, identity, and mystification, technological mysticism lies at the heart of advanced industrial society. When we look at technology this way we find sorne remarkable similarities with theological traditions. Like a religion, technological mysticism 'binds together' core values into a coherent, if implicit (and often unexamined) set ofbeliefs and rituals. But do we want to accept it as the One True Faith? (Stahl, 1999: 19)
In God and the Chip: Religion and the Culture ofTechnology (1999)
William Stahl points out that the computer is the "most potent icon" of our times
and represents a definitional signifier or mirror through which modem culture
views and understands itself(13). For Stahl, what is problematic is not merely
how defining technologies operate historically and culturally to orient and effect a
culture's self-understanding; it is rather technology's iconic status. Stahl's book
is a rejection of the idolatrous nature of technology in general- which he sees as
especially important because the computer's status as a religious ieon is explicitly
contradicted by the narratives about the neutrality of technologies in modem,
secular societies. Referencing philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), Stahl
desires not only to reveal technology's hidden myths and meanings but to "kill the
idol" technology has become (13).
Utilizing the approach of sociology of religion and social constructivism
represented by Science, Technologyand Society studies (commonly referred to as
STS studies), Stahl attempts to expose the hidden, implicit religion oftechnology
in contemporary culture through an analysis of its most socially meaningful
symbol - the computer. The methods of STS studies are based on the social
constructionist theories of Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger from their book
38
The Social Construction of Realitl and who se scholarly program is spelled out in
Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch's anthology The Social
Construction of Technological Systems (1987). For Stahl, and for STS studies in
general, technology is a socially created system of meaning whereby values,
beliefs and the power they represent are concretized in technological practices and
artifacts.
Adopting Arnold Pacey's influential definition oftechnology as simply
practice (Pace y, 1983: 3), Stahl discusses technology as encompassing "technical
aspects (machines and the knowledge to make and operate them), organizational
aspects (the organizational structures and economics ofusing them), and cultural
aspects (the goals, norms, beliefs, and values surrounding the machines and their
use)"(Stahl, 1999: 15). This approach acknowledges the interconnected ways in
which the "technical, social, economic, and political aspects of technological
development" make a "seamless web" of meaning and practice in the
implementation and utilization of technologies (Bijker et al., 1987: 3, Stahl: 16).
Technology is understood not as the simple application of scientific knowledge,
and hence it is understood not as part of an inevitable progress, but rather as
creations and practices reflecting the beliefs and values of individuals and
societies. "Because technology so cIosely ties together what we do with who we
are, much of our discourse about it is mystification" (Stahl, 19). Stahl does not
2 1966 - STS studies are also influenced by the social constructivist works of such figures as Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (1979). See also Isabelle Stengers La vierge et le neutrino: Les scientifiques dans la tourmente (2006): 197-216.
explain why this intimate connection between ontology and practice necessarily
leads to mystification and religiosity.
39
The study of implicit religion cornes out of the sociology of religion,
particularly the work of Edward Bailey, and now comprises a particular sub
discipline in religious studies with its own journals, conferences and specialists.
Much like the work of Robert N. Bellah on civil religions (see Bellah &
Hammond, 1980), the study of implicit religion looks at secular phenomena that
appear 'like' religion but are usually unaclrnowledged as being religions -
particularly by their participants. According to Stahl, implicit religion refers to
"those symbols directed to the numinous which are located outside formaI
religious organizations (e.g., churches) and which are often unrecognized,
unacknowledged, or hidden"(3). The numinous refers to the way in which the
existential reality of participants is defined by the symbols and rituals which
structure their reality - representing the 'ultimate' and transcendental meaning that
ground individu al identity and community.
The reference to 'ultimate meaning' represents once again an
understanding of the essence of religion which, explicitly or implicitly, makes
something identifiable as religion. In the case of implicit religions it must be
interpreted from out a study of the phenomenon and it is neither apparent nor
obvious. Therefore, defining something as an implicit, or even a civil or secular
religion, is the perquisite of the academic or scholar whose interpretation depends
on understanding of what constitutes the ultimate in the hidden and
unacknowledged meanings they reveal. Once again religion is being used as a
40
kind of trope, or in this case a methodological 'tool,' to constrain and contain
what technology means in order to delineate it from both real religion and what
technology itself is supposed to be as a rational endeavor.
To the web of 'technical, social, economic and political' meanings a
social constructivist analysis will identify Stahl adds his analysis of the religious,
or at least the religious-like, myths and symbols that underlie modem technology.
He identifies the myth oftechnology's neutrality and autonomy as part of the
problem for modem culture's obsession with technological fixes for aIl oflife's
problems and he views this as the major consequence of the implicit religion of
technology. Identifying five other myths oftechnological religion, Stahl attempts
to show how each operates symbolically and metaphorically. While he himself
does not always say so, it is easy to show how Stahl compares each of these
myths to a religious equivalent by using computer technologies and computer
culture as his examples oftechnological religion (30-33).
According to Stahl, the myth oftechnology's gendered nature according to
which certain types are masculine and others feminine operate 'institutionaIly' to
create hierarchies of religious power. This then gives ri se to the myth of the' cult
of expertise.,3 The expertise cult creates the priestly, prophetie and monastic
castes oftechnological experts and managers whose exclusive and esoteric
knowledge control access to the inner workings oftechnology. The third myth is
of an infallible technology and human fallibility, which thus operates like a
theodicy to ensure that any technological failures are appropriately understood as
3 see Stahl, "The Masculine Machine," 1999: 53-77, and "Venerating the Black Box," 1999: 79-99 & 1995: 234-58.
41
'human error' (or even as 'sin') rather than due to any fault in the non-human,
fault1ess technological artifact or system. The fourth myth is that of the utopian
myth of progress which sees technology as inevitably evolving towards perfection
and thus operates esehatologieally to ereate dreams of a future-perfeet world.
This is why Stahl cJaims that in teehnologieal religion "through computers, the
Kingdom of God will have arrived," and thus, "technological mysticism assumes
the future will be determined by the machine" (33).
The most important myth Stahl identifies and the one on which he spends
most ofhis efforts is that of 'mastery and control.' This is the myth exemplified
by Goethe's and Marlowes' story of Dr. Faustus selling his soul to the devil in
exchange for power and knowledge. In the chapter on "Faust's Bargain" (101-22)
Stahl shows how the reliance and dependence on technological solutions exhibits
a faith in technology's efficacy that is not warranted by its results. Modem
humanity, like Faust, pays the priee ofrelying on the treacherous and illusory
promises of forces over which human beings abdicate their control and
responsibility. The story of Faust is the story of the negative consequences of
idolatry and the worship of false gods rather than a commentary on what
constitutes truly redeeming technology or the se arch for the 'good society.'
The danger of all these myths, according to Stahl, is that as long as their
meanings remain hidden "we give them power over us and we are subject to
manipulation and self-deception"(2). Stahl believes that this necessitates
demythologizing these narratives in order to seize control of these myths and fight
against the dangers they represent. Stahl's use of the term 'demythologization' is
42
an oblique reference to the work of German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884-
1976) for whom this term represented a way to emphasize the humanly
meaningful nature of mythological speech as the only alternative to both
mythological and scientific objectivation and without reference to non-rational
and supernatural explanations.4 However, Stahl explicitly references Paul
Ricoeur's 'double hermeneutic' as his interpretative method (StahI, 7). According
to StahI, the first step is to "try and strip away the masks and make explicit what
is hidden" and the second is a recovery of meaning where, once the real issues are
separated from the faIse, "we have to discover theologicai and ethical
alternatives" in order to construct a "redemptive technology." (Stahl, 8-9)
Clearly, Stahl's goal is not to merely rem ove the myths from the narratives
which effect technological development, but to actually wrest control of them
from our unconscious and self-deceptive use ofthem and re-mythologize them
more appropriately. As Stahl c1aims, quoting from philosopher of science Mary
Midgley's book Science as Salvation, we have no choice to not use myths to
orient ourse Ives in the world, but like Midgley he believes we have the power to
pick and choose which myths we use (Stahl, 1999: 1, 107 & Midgley, 1992: 13).
The failure of society to reform technology is not only due to ignoring the
mythology which constructs the implicit religion of technology; it is also due to
the distortive effects of the unacknowledged beliefs incorporated in technological
creations. Answering the question ofwhose idea ofthe 'good society' is
represented by technology will reveal the reasons why technological reforms have
4 see M. Boutin "God and Non-objectifying Projection: Consequences of Rudolf BuItmann's Understanding ofOod." in Bernd Jaspert, ed. Rudolf Bultmann Werk und Wirkung. Darmstadt: Wissenshafttliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984: 264-80.
43
failed whereas technological rnysticisrn rernains (159). This explains why Stahl
defines technology as an implicit religion, since the meaning of technology is
inherently a question of power and knowledge. Implicit religion requires an
expert to discover, define and reveal it; in the case oftechnological culture this
means taking the definitional power away from those who are benefiting from its
continued obfuscation. Only then can one construct a narrative of redemptive
technology based on revised standards ofvalues and beliefs to replace the
destructive rnythos.
What is not so clear is how this imposition of the meaning of implicit
religion onto technology escapes any of the myths of technological mysticism
Stahl is critical of. At the very least, Stahl's technique requires the myth of
expertise, in this case the scholar of irnplicit religion, and includes sorne aspects
of the myths ofprogress and infallibility with the idea of the 'rational' as an
adequate means to articulate the 'good society.' Most importantly, the desire to
take 'mastery and control' of the unacknowledged mythological narratives at the
core ofthis hidden religion fails to escape from the main technological problem
and myth Stahl has identified in the first place. Hence, the des ire for control and
mastery should be understood as the primary commandment of the religion of
technology; those theories which would reveal the hidden religion of technology
in order to control the nature ofmyth and symbol are following this religious
injunction.
44
1.4.3 Technology and Christianity - The Anti-Religious Critique
This desire to take 'control' of the mythology which structures our
relations to technology also appears in the work of David F. Noble whose
politically motivated critiques of technology leads him to use the history of the
relations between Christianity and technology as the basis for his rejection of a
religion oftechnology. Noble's analysis makes most clear that the 'religion of
technology' thesis is based on the contradictory foundations of religion as
uncritical, unconscious betief and oftechnology as rational process. Noble's
purpose is to reveal the religion of technology in order to retum to humanity the
true promise oftechnology's power:
... the present enchantment with things technological- the very measure of modem enlightenment - is rooted in religious myths and ancient imaginings. Although today's technologists, in their sober pursuit of utility, power and profits, seem to set society' s standards for rationality, they are driven also by distant dreams, spiritual yeamings for supematural redemption. However dazzling and daunting their display of worldly wisdom, their true inspiration lies elsewhere, in an enduring, other-worldly quest for transcendence and salvation. (Noble, 1997: 6)
The above passage is taken from Noble's The Religion ofTechnology: The
Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (1997) and clearly states what others
may have only implied. Noble's thesis is the following: that which is religious
about technology is the result of the perpetuation of medieval Western religious
beliefs which, despite protestations to the contrary, continues to shape
contemporary technological development. Unlike Stahl, Noble claims that there
45
is nothing symbolic or metaphorical about this religion of technology: it is neither
'similar' to nor 'like' religion. Neither is it, as Thomas and Tillich would have it,
a secular form of religion which has taken the traditional place of religion in the
modern period. Rather, Noble means his 'religion oftechnology' thesis "literally
and historically, to indicate that modem technology and religion have evolved
together and that, as a result, the technological enterprise has been and remains
suffused with religious belief' (5).
Noble attempts to articulate a historical and causative relationship between
religion and technology in order to expose the ways in which technological
development is motivated by religious beliefs and ideas. For him, that which
drives modern technology, it's "true inspiration," der ives from its continuation of
the beliefs found historically in medieval European Christianity. Noble's
historical methodology problematically privileges historical precedents to
definitively shape contemporary culture and he defiantly rejects any notion of a
discontinuity or break which is normally what is meant by the very term
'modern.' However, his work does acknowledge a conti nuit y between historical
religious thought and contemporary practices that is often missing when the
history of the modem and of technology is written.
Noble's approach is based on sorne of the same assumptions as those in
Stahl's and Thomas' work. The first is that a form ofdemythologization is
necessary in order to reveal the hidden religion and to replace it with something
more authentic and real. As weil, like most other manifestations of the 'religion
oftechnology' thesis, Noble makes the assumption that any religiousness
46
attributable to technology cannot be a good thing; rather this indicates a failure or
breakdown in application of either technology or religion. For him, the
enlightenment project of a rational and secular society is threatened by the critical
blindness inherent in any manifestation of a religion of technology.
Like Stahl and Thomas, Noble believes it is necessary not only to reveal
the harm these myths are doing but also to somehow seize control ofthem. What
this amounts to is an account of the knowledge effects of religious beliefs and
myths which assumes that their motivational power is open to manipulation or
control- which is itself one of the myths ofmodemity. The contradictory nature
ofthis presupposition underlying Noble's understanding of the necessity ofmyth
versus its rational mutability is c1ear in how he understands the purpose of myths:
Ruman beings have always constructed collective myths, in order to give coherence, a sense of meaning and control, to their shared experience. Myths guide and inspire us, and enable us to live in an ultimately uncontrollable and mysterious universe. But if our myths help us, the can also over time harm us, by blinding us to our real and urgent needs. (6)
That the purpose of collective myth is to 'enable us to live in an ultimately
uncontrollable' universe is strangely at odds with the desire to take control of said
myths. If myths are a necessarily unconscious attempt by culture to control the
uncontrollable, then it is not c1ear how they will continue to function as myths
once they are laid bare, removed or replaced. For Noble, religion is equal to blind
belief and, as the above quote shows, is based on 'constructed' myths that shape
collective understandings and influence practices. As a constructed irrational
belief system religion necessarily distorts or hides sorne other authentic or true
reality. Once again, the underlying definition of religion with regard to the
47
religion of technology is the uncritical acceptance of irrational beliefs. While
Noble never says so, it is clear that for him the religion oftechnology distorts the
true liberatory goals and intentions of technological implementation and
development.
Noble's critique is not unique; in fact, he utilizes much of the material and
many of the conclusions ofhistorian Lynn White, Jr.'s groundbreaking work on
the importance of technological developments in medieval Europe. The work of
Lynn White, Jr. stands as an important development for understanding the effects
of medieval history for creating the modem world. In several works published
throughout the mid-twentieth century, most importantly Medieval Technology and
Social Change (1962), White argues that rather than a period of intellectual
stagnation and 'darkness' the Middle Ages in Europe were a time of intense
technological and social development and innovation. While Lewis Mumford's
Technics and Civilization (1934) was one of the first histories oftechnology to
point out the momentous effects of medieval technological developments on
Western culture, White's importance arises partly from the conclusions he derives
from this radical departure from more normative histories of technology.
These scholars show how the effects of medieval and pre-modem
practices regarding the mechanical and useful arts are the direct progenitors of
contemporary technological practices and goals. Historically speaking the
European Middle' Ages were a period of intense technological development.
Throughout the early and late medieval periods numerous technological
innovations were made in agricultural tools and techniques and in new techniques
48
in animal husbandry, military practices and implements, and in the adoption of
wind and water power, as weIl as radical changes in architecture. Viewed
together, aIl these developments show a picture of a technological revolution
taking place. However, when the histories of modem science and technology in
the West are usually told they begin with early Greek and Roman developments
and then literally skip over a thousand or so years of European history to land in
the period of scientific developments of the beginnings of the industrial
revolutions. This willful ignorance of the effect of medieval thought in the
development of the modem world is an example of the mythology ofmodemity
which takes historical Christianity as its enemy and hence negates its influence on
its creation. It is ironic that Noble uses this new historical perspective to continue
the centuries-old mythology ofmodernity's creatio ex nihilo.
More importantly, White's influence on understanding the historical
relationship of religion and technology arises from his effect on contemporary
ecological and environmentalist scholarship. One of the most highly cited articles
of the late twentieth century was White's 1967 article from Science magazine,
"The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis," which has inspired the, now
common, perception that Christianity is to be blamed for all our technologically-
inspired ecological problems. In his article, White points to the introduction of
new agricultural techniques in seventh century Europe (i.e., the heavy plow)
which changed the way in which human beings related to the earth:
[ ... ] distribution of land was based no longer on the needs of the family but, rather on the capacity of a power machine to til! the earth. Man's relation to the soil was profoundly changed. Formerly man had been a part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature ... is it coincidence that
modem technology, with its ruthlessness towards nature, has so largely been produced by descendants of these peasants of northern Europe? (1967: 1206-07)
White's conclusion is that this new relationship was due to Christianity as the
49
"most anthropocentric religion the world has ever known" (1205). According to
this view the Christian creation story (Gen. 1: 1-2:4a) gives humanity dominion
over nature (Gen. 1 :28) and this has led to contemporary technologically created
environmental problems. In his article, White will even offer an 'alternative
Christian view' to environmental crises suggesting as a solution that the ideas of
"the greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history" St. Francis of Assisi be
adopted (1206-07). Whereas Lynn White Jr.'s work only implicated Christian
theological understandings ofhumanity's role in modern technological
development, Noble's work concretizes this assertion and actually makes
contemporary technology and Christian theology synonymous.
For Noble, the radical changes in technological development in the
medieval period were accompanied by a change in Christian attitudes towards
transcendence and human salvation through this-worldly acts. With the
popularization of the Imago Dei theology (the theological position that human
beings are made in the image of god - see Gen. 1 :27» medieval Europeans began
to view themselves, and their god, as engineers of creation. In opposition to early
Christian notions of salvation as being out of their hands, medieval Christianity is
characterized by the beginnings of the idea that transcendence can be achieved
through active labour and works done in this world. Along with the rise of a
millennial anxiousness about the expected end of the world and the rise of the
50
labour-oriented monastic movements, medieval Christians began to believe they
could achieve transcendence and a perfection here on earth through their own acts
and not by the whim ofa god. This is one of the reasons why, according to
Noble, the mythology sUITounding modern science and technology represented
best by the image of the pristine white-coated scientists in laboratories working in
solitude and creating wondrous tools and devices echoes the religious beliefs and
practices of medieval Christianity.
Noble's and White's histories should not be faulted for their analysis of
the effect of Christian ideas on Western technological development. They can
however be critiqued for failing to adequately address either the question of
technology or of religion. The history of 'technology and religion' in the West is
no different than the history of any other subject of 'religion and X' (be it art, law
or politics): they overemphasize the determinative effects of European religious
ideas on the creation of the modern techno-religious outlook. The latter half of
Noble's book discusses the religious beliefs and practices ofvarious twentieth
century technologists and users which, white illuminating, is not convincing
enough to suggest that a modern Christian 'religion oftechnology' exists. For
example, while it is interesting and somewhat revealing of American society to
discuss the widespread existence of Christian beliefs and practices among the
American astronauts and V.S. space pro gram creators, this does not prove that
space programs themselves are an explicitly Christian practice. There was no
comparable explicit Christianity to be found amongst the contemporary Soviet
space program, and neither is there today in China's space program development.
51
While a discussion ofMarxism as religion would account for this - Noble does
not do this and, in fact, he may not be prepared to do so due to his own leftist
political orientation which underlie his reasons for revealing this religiosity in the
first place. However, his problematic understandings of both religion and
technology make his analysis unsatisfying and unconvincing.
In order that modem technology remain infused with Christian beliefs, it
requires an understanding of techno10gy as an inherently neutra1 phenomenon.
For Noble and White, technologies, while socially constructed and dependent
upon culturally specifie ideas and beliefs, can still be other than they are. Modem
technology and a technological way of thinking are neither determinative nor
limited by any inherent power - in fact, the argument for determinative historical
effects negates the ide a ofthe modem in the first place. For Noble and White,
technology serves humankind and remain simply tools. This does not adequately
address what may be unique and different about modem technology (more on this
in the following chapters); it therefore negates the significance of the danger of
religious technology both Noble and White are concemed with. The other
problem is their understanding of religion - which, for both, is based on simple
blind belief and faith. For Noble especially, religion itself is represented best by
historical, medieval Christianity. Such an impoverished viewpoint does nothing
to illuminate anything about how we understand religion or technology.
Noble's simple equation regarding the instrumental neutrality of
technology and of falseness of Christian beliefs is apparent in his final words in
The Religion ofTechnology:
52
The thousand-year convergence of technology and transcendence has thus outlived whatever historical usefulness it might once have had. Indeed, as our technological enterprise assumes ever more awesome proportions, it becomes aIl the more essential to decouple it from its religious foundation [ ... ] Such an undertaking demands defiance of the divine pretensions of the few in the interest ofsecuring the mortal necessities of the many, and presupposes that we disabuse ourselves of our inherited other-worldly propensities in order to embrace anew our one and only earthly existence. (208)
This leaves Noble in the position of dismissing the technological orientation of
contemporary culture because he does not believe in Christianity; this is as odd a
marri age of technology and religion as is the rejection of technology because it is
not Christian enough.
It may be helpful to note that Noble's rejection of any religion of
technology is partly due to his political disagreement with the disparate power
relations the use of technology promotes. This is evident in his entire oeuvre
from his early America By Design (1977), through Progress Without People
(1995), and his more recent scathing critique of the educational industrial
complex in Digital Dipfoma Mills (2002). This is the primary reason why he
categorizes technology as a religion. Unlike Stahl and Thomas, it is not because
he has any coherent or preferential theory of religion. The use of the category
religion for Noble is only a way to be dismissive and denigrating of the ways in
which modern and late modern culture's utilize and invoke technology. Religion
remains an ideological trope for the devaluation oftechnology; Noble's work
explains nothing about the intimate relationship between modem religion and
modem technology except that it is but the eventual result of a historical accident.
1.5 Western Religion and Anti-Technology
AlI of the above scholars agree that there is something religious about
modem technology and technological culture, the only identifiable religion they
use to understand such religiousness is Christianity. Also they understand
technology as essentially a neutral, or at least ambiguous, socially constructed
phenomenon, and it is its unacknowledged religiousness that is problematic. In
fact, virtually aIl attempts to articulate a 'religion oftechnology' thesis do so to
critique and reject contemporary technological practices as manifestations of a
Western religious mind-set.
53
Most studies of modem technology assume that the technological culture
spawned by modem technology is inherently Western. As Lynn White JI. c1aims,
it is so "certain as to be stupid to verbalize" that "both modern technology and
modem science are distinctively Occidental" (1967: 1204). The global spread of
technology is thus merely another example of the Western colonization of the
world. Therefore, a 'religion oftechnology' argument means that the inter
cultural spread of technology and the conflicts that may ensue are the result of the
imposition of Western religion on the religions of other cultures. The
understanding of religion as uncritical belief and the understanding of technology
as a dominant force are fused together to imply that global technologization is the
resuIt of a Western religion of technology.
In this sense, the 'religion oftechnology' thesis represents an articulation
of one of the basic conflicts of modernity - between secular reason and irrational
54
faith. It is clear that this should also be understood as representing a conflict
between two Western fonns of religion - traditional religion and a new secular
faith. So, the relationship between technology and religion is always understood
as a problem which requires sorne reevaluation of Western religious or spiritual
beliefs. This relationship between religion and technology has been understood
mainly as one of conflict implying sorne fonn of comparability between
technology and religion. In order to adequately address the contradiction between
our understanding of the meaning of religion and the meaning oftechnology it is
necessary to ask what may or may not be religious about technology and what
impact technology may or may not have on religion.
Resolving the issue of the conflictual relationship between Western
religion and Christian anti-technology is at the core of Jay Newman's Religion
and Technology: A Study in the Philosophy of Culture (1997). In his
comprehensive analysis of possible relations between technology and religion,
Newman discusses the ways in which Christianity (and to sorne degree Judaism)
has related to technology. While he discusses sorne instances of Christian pro
technology, Newman's focus is primarily on understanding the prevalence of a
history of Christian anti-technology; his work can be seen partly as a reaction to
works su ch as Mitcham and Grote's Technology and Theology (1984) and other
theological reactions to technological culture.
For Newman, although "there are occasions when it is useful and even
necessary to have before us a specific definition of religion," he feels that for his
purposes "the reader has an adequate working conception of religion based on his
55
or her experience and reflection"(6). Religion is a commonly understood idea;
either it needs no explanation, or it would be too difficult to do so because this
would require a fundamental reevaluation of the meanings ofboth religion and
technology. Despite this, Newman makes a claim that may provide an important
clue towards such a reevaluation. Whereas this idea had appeared in sorne
techno-humanist ideations of the meaning oftechnology, Newman addresses the
possibility ofunderstanding technology as a kind of 'proper successor' to religion
- which would be an invitation to consider how much of the 'religion of
technology' argument does prevail. In a speculative vein, Newman argues that
[ ... ] technology could now be se en as an even more dangerous cultural rival of religion, for the religionist might now have to worry about the practical cultural observer's concluding that technology may be an adequate substitute for religion .. Technology's very success in contributing to the realization of ide aIs such as freedom, knowledge, happiness, and peace - ideals that most defenders of religion see as historically associated with the traditional ethicosocial pro gram of religion - may lead the practical observer to believe that technology is a proper successor to religion. (1997: 110-111)
This leads Newman to sorne very interesting speculations regarding the
technological nature of religion. As he notes with regards to his own analyses, the
idea that religion and technology can be viewed as compatible "does not do
justice to the ways in which technology can be regarded as a religious endeavor;"
this is even more so in regards to the technological nature of religion (143). The
products, artifacts and practices of religion, in this case Christianity, are easily as
much manifestations of technology as any contemporary examples found in
technological culture. The concrete realization ofreligious institutions, such as
56
in art and architecture, are the result of the use and utilization oftools, techniques,
and machines that clearly make them as much technological creations as religious
ones.
The impact and power of religious technology is also apparent in the ways
in which religion has produced historically significant artifacts such as those
found in religious books and writings. However, it is not because new writing
technologies such as the printing press and the infamous Gutenberg bible
historically effected the shape and form of European culture and society; it is
because the religious status of the book itself in Western religion (i.e., the 'People
of the Book' as synonymous with the Abrahamic faiths) made the technology
both desirable and possible (145-146).
As Newman notes, "technology - the field of productive technique, skill,
method, procedure, and the like - can be helpfully regarded as the context of
every aspect of religion," including ways ofunderstanding the world (146).
Newman even goes so far as to speculate that it may be possible to see that "the
idea of God - as the greatest product of ancient Jewish technology" has been
"vastly more influential than the technology that has resulted in pyramids and
computer chips" (150). However, Newman also notes that
Whatever value there may be in considering religion as, among other things, a kind oftechnology, it is plain that talking about religion in this way will make most speakers of our language somewhat il1 at ease. They may be prepared to concede [ ... ] that there is a sense in which religion can be appropriately characterized in this way; but even then ... they may still feel that to classify religion as a kind oftechnology is to 'stretch a point' and to employ language in a misleadtng, manipulative, or cumbersome way. (1967: 152-153)
57
Probably the most problematic aspect of the religion-technology relationship axis
is the confusion caused by the conflations of the two into one phenomenon.
While the rituals and practices found in shamanistic and magic-based traditions,
and even in medieval European alchemy and hermetic practices, are often
interpreted as kinds of proto-technologies, the assumption has always been that
'true' technology only arose as the resuIt of modern scientific practices. Religion,
if it is thought to have any relationship to modem technology at ail, is mostly
understood as technology's antithesis commonly expressed with Iittle or no
relation to its industrial and mechanical applications. What Newman's suggestion
about religion as technology brings to the fore is that the difficulty of
understanding what kind or form of religion technology is may not be the issue.
What may be more helpful is to understand what technology is in order to be
comparable or equatable to religion.
1.6 The Failure of a 'Religion of Technology' Thesis
The history of defining religion could be understood as an integral part of
the self-definitional history of the modem itself. HistoricaIly, the two arose
together - the defining of religion as religion and the rise of a specifie historical
period called the modem itself. Religion could be understood as a catch-aU term
encompassing an those things which constitute the necessary outside of the
fundamental constituents of modemity - reason, science and secularity. The very
notion of the modem is dependent upon the articulation of a previous and/or
58
altemate mode ofknowing that stands over and against it and is supposedly
superior to it, supplants and replaces it. These 'other' historical, ontological and
epistemological phenomena are usually understood as religion; as such, they
represent aIl that stands outside of, and in opposition to, the modem.
If technology and religion - which in most understandings not only
represent differently inspired forms ofpractice but are also concemed with
fundamentally different ends - are understood in the ways in which Stahl,
Thomas and Noble suggest, then much ofwhat we think we know about our
world and the way in which it operates falls into disarray. This is especially so in
regards to questions about the nature ofhuman values and beliefand the
consequences ofhuman freedom and responsibility. AIl ofthese are necessarily
challenged by the pairing of two phenomena which seem to deal so exclusively
with different aspects of what it means to be human more specifically by the -
unintentional - conflation between what we believe in and what we do.
The pairing of science and religion, though inevitably classified as
representing oppositional or even warring categories, nonetheless assumes they
share the same status as objects of thought; though only if one acknowledges that
belief requires thought. Invoking sorne affective relationship between religion
and technology would strip the former from its privileged status as a system of
beliefs to simple practice, while the latter would be raised to such an extent that
mere technicality becomes an overarching canopy ofthought. The significance of
aIl this requires a rethinking of the ways in which theory and practice, science and
technology, religious thought and religious practice are understood.
59
While the most adequate understanding of the meaning of technology is
central to the controversial debates which surround technology, attempts to
articulate sorne kind of religion qua technology thesis inevitably fail to take into
account similar issues regarding the meaning of religion. Most of these studies
operate with problematic and criticalIy deficient understandings ofwhat is meant
by religion; such critical blindness facilitates the ideological utilization of religion
as a trope to critique technology and technological culture. AlI the works that
discuss technology as religious are based on the ide a that religion is about belief
(transcendent, numinous, sacred, ultimate) and that it represents sorne form or
system of order represented symbolically. Such a common definition has become
obvious and commonsensical. However, as Newman's discussion shows,
understanding religion itself as a form of technology, or technology as a form of
religion, makes it clear that these understandings are inadequate.
These definitions of religion require that religion be about belief. Hence,
while it may be understood to be an irrational mental structure, it is open to the
modern, rational enterprise that can reevaluate acception or rejection ofbelief
based on rational arguments. The main problems with most oftheories of religion
and technology is that they understand religion first as about ide as, thoughts and
values and only secondarily as about practices. Theories of religion as 'ultimate
value' or those which privilege an 'authentic' form over an 'inauthentic' form ail
have in common an understanding which assumes a certain cognitive affective
relationship between theory and practice. This is something the philosophy of
technology, particularly in its Heideggerian inspired forms, challenges.
60
Theories of religion which privilege an understanding of religion as
primarily related to rationality and cognition cannot fully explain religion in its
material and quotidian manifestations without risking a distortion of its general
nature. Especially when considering the relationship between religion and
modem technology, religious practice is elided and ignored in favour of the
applied-theory understanding of religion, i.e., religion as 'ultimate meaning.' Any
attempt to understand religion without recourse to its manifestations in practices
is not only impoverished intellectually but is merely replicating a problem that
characterizes much of Western philosophy: the privileging oftheory over
practice.
Tuming to philosophical discussions regarding the meaning of technology
appears justified as a way to gain sorne ground. However, it soon becomes clear
that, even more than attempting to ascertain sorne certainty about the meaning of
religion, the philosophy of technology is plagued by ontological issues which
define the core of the field. There is in philosophy oftechnology a paT!icular
stream of thought oriented around the disparity between the ontic and the
ontological - between the actual and the transcendent. To this stream we can tum
in the attempt to gain sorne insight into contemporary culture's religious
relationship to technology.
61
Chapter 2:
Europe versus America: Religion, Technology and Metaphysics
2.1 A New Philosophy for the New World?
In 1997, the book Van Stoommachine tot cyborg; denken over techniek in
de nieuwe wereli was published in the Netherlands. Authored by several
members of the philosophy department from the University of Twente, the work
included analyses of six North American philosophers of technology - Albert
Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde and
Langdon Winner - and proclaimed their work to begin a new direction in the
philosophical study of technology. This book represents a unique moment in the
history of the philosophy oftechnology and of Western philosophy in general. In
a tradition where North American philosophy has often been derivative of, and
even directly oppositional to, continental European thought, this work turns the
tables and points to the 'new world' as the source for current and future directions
in regards to philosophy of technology. The perspectives offered by the Dutch
scholars reading these American philosophers crystallize sorne of the major
differences between the 'old' and 'new' worlds pertaining to the philosophy of
technology. Significantly, it highlights a fundamental conflict between a
materialist versus a metaphysical approach to understanding the significance of
technique. An exploration of this conflict reveals a tension regarding the
relationship of religion to technology in Western thought which helps to find a
1 LiteraI English translation: "From Steam Engine to Cyborg: Thinking Technology in the New World" (Achterhuis, 2001: foreward, viii).
context for understanding the prevalence and accuracy of the 'religion of
technology' thesis.
62
Translated by Robert Crease and published in North America as American
Philosophy ofTechnology: The Empirical Turn (2001), the Dutch book's English
title suggests that American philosophers have instigated a new direction, an
'empirical tum', in the philosophical study oftechnology. This understanding of
North American philosophy oftechnology highlights that which is unique and
different about the American approach and what it rejects from its European
forebears. The book discusses American philosophers as ones who have moved
beyond what editor Hans Achterhuis de scribes as the 'classical fathers' of
philosophy of technology - those early twentieth-century philosophers who made
technology the center of their philosophical speculations. According to
Achterhuis, these early philosophers made three 'discoveries' and formulated the
main questions that shaped the future directions of the philosophy of technology
in the twentieth century.
The primary merit of such an approach was that it understood something
radically new about technology in the modem period. Technology "must not be
thought of as applied natural science [ ... ] it is less an instrument than a form of
Iife [ ... ] it must be understood as a system" (2001: 3). This position characterized
an understanding of technology as a particular approach which, according to
Achterhuis, has replaced the previous 'symbolically driven' ones. Modern
technology is the oppositional 'other' of"the symbolic-linguistic approach to
reality" (4). Here lies the first clue to untangling sorne of the confusions in
'religion oftechnology' arguments.
63
From the discussion of the 'religion oftechnology' thesis (see # 1.1 to 1.6)
the 'other' oftechnology has normatively been understood as historical religion,
and religion has been continuously identified as a manifestation of a symbolic
and/or metaphorical relationship to reality. Those theorizing about this
relationship have focused on the ways in which a symbolic-linguistic system of
meaning influences the creation of technologies and of technological reality.
Thus, in order for a 'religion of technology' thesis to work there must be
something similar about a historically religious approach to reality and a
technological one.
As Achterhuis' statement suggests, the symbolic-linguistic, or religious,
and the technological are two conflicting ways of perceiving and experiencing
reality. Achterhuis discusses historian oftechnology Carl Mitcham's point that
the history of the philosophy of technology is a conflict between two competing
theories of human nature: "one theory sees human beings as essentially homo
[aber, a productive being; the other as [ ... ] homo loquax, a being characterized by
the linguistic"(4). The classical philosophers oftechnology while noting this
difference "al ways shrank back from acknowledging how fundamental this gap
was, and sought to place homo [aber and the technological approach again
hierarchically beneath the sway of the linguistic"(4). This is why the Dutch and
the American authors are critical of the c1assical philosophers for their failure to
deal with the quotidian reality of modem technology in human culture and
64
experience. The main fault was that this earlier approach attempted to articulate
the significance of modem technology in a transcendent or totalizing fashion, thus
giving technology a metaphysical basis that made it inherently inhuman and
deterministic. These thinkers aIl "refrain from addressing the concrete
technological practices and developments, and fail as weIl to appreciate how these
can rapidly alter the actual normative frameworks of culture"(6).
This conflict about the metaphysical interpretation of the basis of modern
technology is at the center of an entire field of Euro-American philosophy of
technology. A brief look at the philosophers profiled in the Dutch book reveals
that four out of the six, Albert Borgmann, Don Ihde, Andrew Feenberg, and
Hubert Dreyfus were aIl influenced by German philosopher Martin Heidegger' s
(1889-1976) understanding oftechnology. It was Heidegger who most
thoroughly expressed and explored the metaphysical understanding oftechnology
which the North American and Dutch philosophers are struggling to disengage
from. Understanding this struggle, and negotiating sorne of the issues it raises,
will not only tell us something important about the relations between religion and
technology but reveal sorne fundamental insights into the nature of the
contemporary world. A brief examination of the history of the philosophy of
technology is helpful.
2.2 A Brief History of The Philosophy of Technology
Historically speaking, the philosophy of technology is either one of the
newest disciplines in Western philosophy or one of the oidest. As Don Ihde notes
65
in his Philosophy ofTechnology: An Introduction, the problem of defining the
history of the philosophy of technology is partly due to the problematic history of
the difference between theory and practice in Western philosophy (1993: 19-20).
It is generally accepted that in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy practice and
experience are fundamental forms ofknowledge human beings have of the world.
Ruman practices were understood as the basis for knowledge of the world and
were ultimately what shaped and formed who we are. Through technë, those arts
and crafts which comprise culture, that what we are and what we can be were
understood.
Plato's allegory of the cave (The Republic Book VII) in which truth is
only glimpsed in its ide al forms rather than perceived in manifestations in the
material world made Western philosophy eventually became more oriented
toward theory or the rational contemplation of ideas than toward any material,
experientially-based understanding ofhuman reality (Ihde, 1993: 21). A
consequence of this is that in Western thought practice would eventually be seen
as entirely secondary to theory. This would manifest itself in every historical
period from the Roman to the Modem. Marked by such moments as Cicero's
famous disdain for manuallabour this privileging of theory over practice became
reified during the European historical periods named the Renaissance, the
Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries).
During these periods the modern prejudice in which theory dominates practice
and science is said to give birth to technology became unquestioned truth.
66
Science, philosophy and all intellectual endeavors were accorded superiority and
priority over such denigrated practices as engineering and technology.
It was not until the nineteenth century and the influence of Hegelian
inspired philosopher Karl Marx, that practice, understood by Marx through a
social analysis of the means of production, became a major focus for
philosophical thought. A specific focus on technology per se did not become
explicit until Ernst Kapp's Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (1877) in
which technology was more than merely the study of the industrial or useful arts
and was itselfunderstood as comparable to culture (see Mitcham, 1994: 20-27).
This meant that technology was understood to encompass everything from
language to science up to the state itself. Historians of technology such as Leo
Marx and Eric Schatzberg note that this was a typically German understanding of
technik and it was not generally how technology was understood in English or
American contexts as simply the study of the industrial or useful arts (Marx, 1997:
965-88 and Schatzberg, 2006: 486-512). Hence, the creation of a self-identified
area ofphilosophy focusing on technology itselfis relatively recent and, as a
recognizable philosophic sub-discipline, the philosophy of technology is a
decidedly twentieth-century phenomenon.
According to Achterhuis the 'classical' twentieth-century philosophers of
technology included such thinkers as Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Jacques
EUul, Lewis Mumford and Herbert Marcuse. AU have been accused of falling
into the same trap of thinking about technology, one in which technology is not to
be confused with any specifie machine or with any particular theoretical
67
application, but rather is formulated variously as a way oflife, a form ofthinking,
or as a way in which the meaning ofbeing human is confined. Technology in the
'classical' view appears to he far removed from any specifie tool, device or
machine.
Whether modem technique is defined as the 'megamachine' of Lewis
Mumford, the 'technical system' of Jacques EUul, the 'apparatus'of Karl Jaspers,
the 'one dimensional society' of Herhert Marcuse or the 'device'(Ge-stell) of
Martin Heidegger - an these theories appear to understand modem technology as
a self-determining and autonomous force which orders an human meaning and
practice (Achterhuis, 2001: 3-6). For these thinkers, modem technology is
Technology writ large; most importantly - and this has led many CUITent thinkers
to reject these definitions - they also suggest that modem technology is racing
beyond human control and that no act ofhuman will can rein it in.
The placing ofthese diverse thinkers into one conceptual camp may
distort their fundamental differences; yet it does highlight one major realization
they an share. What primarily unites the early twentieth-century philosophers of
technology is an appreciation of the uniqueness of the modem approach to reality
which privileges calculative, rational thinking over against any other form of
thought. The calculative logic of scientific rationality is commonly understood as
the highest achievement ofhumankind that liherated us from the superstitions and
iITational beliefs characteristic of earlier times and of other less technologically
advanced locales. This understanding of technology makes it the salvation of
humanity, and it is this understanding which the early philosophers of technology
68
explicitly rejected. Not incidentally, it is also an understanding which lends itself
to the uncritical understanding of technology as religion.
The reduction of every hope and fear of the human race to mere
technicalities (waiting only for the appropriate, or misappropriate, science to
make them come true) led many of these early philosophers of technology to view
modem technology as the outward manifestation of an inhuman way of thinking.
lnhuman because its only criteria are calculative thinking and rationalized
efficiency - the exact same qualities which define machines and which would
thus subsume the meaning ofhumanity into a machine-like collectivity. These
early philosophers saw that human beings are no longer counting on the cohesion
supplied by their cultural and religious symbolic-linguistic systems. The
traditional ways in which humanity has always related to, interacted with and
comprehended their environment were no longer operative. While humanity has
always had ways and means that could be referred to as technologies these had
always been subservient to the ends structured by the cultural/religious systems in
which they arose. Technological means and ends had always been guided, shaped
and formed by the contexts in which they were found. There was always an
intimate and constructive relationship between the hc:w and the why, whether we
are discussing ancient Egyptian architecture, pre-colonization Navajo textiles, or
early European agriculture.
With the rise of modem techno-scientific rationality, the ends of particular
ways and means are evaluated in a new, more standardized way. The only end
that can possibly matter is to be found within the technical means actualizing it
69
and based on new absolute criteria of efficiency, logic and control. Through the
rational discovery of the processes of the natural world ends are determined.
Simply put, the purpose of any method or practice is someh~w determined
method itself; the technological how replaces the metaphysical why. The
corollary of this view becomes the undeclared goal of all modem knowledge
production and acquisition - be it science or philosophy - the mastery,
manipulation and control of the natural world. One of the most influential
founders of modem thought, René Descartes (1596-1650), invoked this as a
desirable goal in his Discourse on Method (1637):
... we can discover a practical philosophy by which, through understanding the force and actions of fire, air, stars, heavens, and aIl the other bodies which surround us as distinctly as we understand the various crafts of our artisans, we could use them in the same way for aIl applications for which they are appropriate and thus make ourselves, as it were, the masters and possessors of nature. 2
The 'appropriate' applications ofknowledge which would make us the 'masters
and possessors ofnature' are determined by nothing else than the force and
actions of the natural world itself. Rence, it is in the nature of the world that
human beings shape it technologically and for the bene fit of the human subject for
whom these forces are merely the ground for the potential perfection ofhumanity.
It was such a view that Martin Heidegger found so objectionable, and
which he saw as a fundamental error in thinking characteristic of Western
metaphysics - an error his entire work was an attempt to uncover and correct.
2 René Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637), part six: " ... on en peut trouver une pratique, par laquelle, connoissant la fo;ce et les actions du feu, de l'eau, de l'air, des astres, des cieux, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que nous connoissons les divers métiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrions employer en même façon à tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maîtres et possesseurs de la nature."
70
Because of Heidegger's influence on contemporary European philosophy, his
analysis ofWestem philosophy, metaphysics and technology became the focal
point for philosophers interested in understanding the constituent nature of the
modern technological world. Heidegger's approach to technology marks the
conflicted center around which much of European and American philosophy of
technology revolves. For him:
The basic form of appearance in which the will to will arranges and calculates itself in the unhistorical element of the world of completed metaphysics can be stringently called 'technology.' [ ... ] Thus 'technology' does not signifY here the separate are as of production and equipment ofmachines [ ... ] the name 'technology' is understood here in such an essential way that its meaning coincides with the term 'completed metaphysics.' (Heidegger, 1973: 93)
2.3 Old World Philosophy - Technology As Religion, Religion As Technology
Due primarily to the influence of Heidegger and his critique of the onto-
theological tradition, a particular stream of thought attempts to think through the
possibilities suggested by his philosophical speculations regarding the relationship
between technology and metaphysics. Philosophy in Europe can be viewed as a
kind oftool which attempts to explore the 'religion/technological complex.' As
Arthur Bradley notes:
... contemporary European thought represents an innovative attempt to articulate a mutually constitutive relationship between technology and religion - where each concept exists only in relation to its other [ ... ] This new kind of deus ex machina resists the habituaI opposition between nontechnological religion on the one hand and a non-religious technology on the other to explore what we might caU the religion/technological complex. (2005: 272-273)
It is this tradition that the Dutch and American philosophers of technology are
struggling to disengage from. In his article "Deus ex Machina: Towards a
71
Philosophy of Religion and Technology" Bradley argues that in contemporary
Europe there have been two paths of thinking about the implications of
Heidegger's critique ofmetaphysics - represented by the religious writings of
sueh figures as Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Jean-lue
Marion, and the "equally prominent attempt to think through the implications of
technology" as something that is "coterminous with the western metaphysical
tradition" by Pierre Boudieu, Samuel Weber, and Bernard Stiegler (2005: 271).
Bradley believes that there is an "increasing recognition that these two
contemporaneous philosophical movements" ought to be explored together as
"part of one and the same inquiry"(27 1-272).
According to Bradley, it was Heidegger who first argued that "far from
them", which is why he contends that "since Socrates western philosophy has
been 'both ontology and theology'''(274). Bradley also argues that French
philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), in his attempts to think through the
possibilities of a non-metaphysical approach to thinking, argues for an originary
unity between technology and religion which precedes, or somehow evades, the
spectre of Western onto-theology (277-278).
French philosopher Bernard Stiegler has also written on the relationship
between religion and teehnology in Derrida's work. In "Derrida and
Technology," which is a reflection on Oerrida's "Faith and Knowledge: the Two
Sources of 'Religion' at the Limits ofReason Alone" (1996), Stiegler concludes
that Derrida's entire body ofwork can be understood as an attempt to reveal and
72
reconcile the relations between technology and faith in Western thought (Stiegler,
2001: 259). Stiegler himself engages the philosophy oftechnology with an eye
towards its relations with onto-theology and metaphysics. In his Technics and
Time series: La faute d'Epiméthée (1994), La désorientation (1996), and Le temps
du cinéma et la question du mal-être (2001) he provides an understanding of
temporality as the central way of understanding the meaning of modern
technology (1994: 18). Despite the fact that Stiegler disagrees with Heidegger on
the way to interpret the central meaning oftechnology, he and other philosophers
continue to think about technology and religion with reference to the ontological
and metaphysical traditions of Europe that began with Heidegger's work.
From this it could be concluded that the primary theme in this strand of
European philosophy has been an attempt to articulate the complex relations
between religion and technology as an exercise in coping with the onto
theological or metaphysical interpretations ofboth technology and religion. In an
odd sense then, this strand of thinking represents a kind of philosophy/theology of
the technology/religion relationship, where technology is understood as
manifestation of belief and an overarching system of meaning, and not as
particular technologie al instances or even specifie forms of practice.
While this type of theorizing may be helpful in the larger philosophical
sense of orienting thought and ideas - for sorne philosophers there is nothing in it
that may be helpful for understanding the day-to-day implementation and
utilization of technologies. Onto-theological reflections cannot be adequately
applied to understanding quotidian technological practices. This is even more so
73
for the attempt to understand religion in the practices and behaviours of
individuals and societies. This partially explains why Dutch philosophers Hans
Achterhuis, Pieter Tijmes and Peter-Paul Verbeek, who work at a self-described
'entrepreneurial research university' (i.e., the University ofTwente) have turned
away from the rest of Europe and look instead to North America for an answer to
the question of the age. They believe that North American philosophy of
technology has more practical implications for technology design and
implementation. For example, Verbeek has adopted Don Ihde's 'post
phenomenological' philosophical method for analyzing issues in technological
design the ory in his book What Things Do (2005) and argues for a method of
technology design which, as he caUs it in another work, is a way of 'materializing
morality. '(2006) The North American approach to philosophy of technology is
deemed a better tool for evaluating ontic instances oftechnologization and for
evaluating the moral and ethical choices and decisions these represent.
It is the turn to ontic instances of technologization that allows the North
American philosophers to be characterized as 'empirical' philosophers of
technology. What this characterization points to is a way of understanding
technology that is completely oriented towards exhuming its practical nature.
Exploring this from the viewpoint of the relations between religion and
technology sorne interesting discoveries are made about how we are to understand
and articulate what is new about technology and what religion means
technologically. By turning now to an analysis oftwo of the North American
philosophers profiled in the Dutch book, Don Ihde and Albert Borgmann, we
74
discover that they do not escape the religious or metaphysical underpinnings of
the meaning of modem technology so easily. However, unlike in the European
approach, their philosophical speculations reveal an affective materiality that
suffuses modem technology; a materiality that can also be understood as
coextensive with religion in technological culture. Examining these figures helps
to articulate the outlines, shape and form of an actualized technology/religion
relation that encompasses aIl that is normally understood by technology and
religion.
75
Chapter 3
Don Ibde: Escape from Tecbnological Determinism
In an attempt to reevaluate how we are to understand the ubiquity and
pervasiveness ofthe 'religion oftechnology' thesis a turn to practice-oriented
philosophies oftechnology is appropriate. This is necessary due to the problem of
conflating religion and technology as the European philosophical tradition
appears to do. The metaphysical, or transcendental, interpretations of technology
continue the centuries long struggle in the 'old' world of the initially Greek
attempt to articulate the ontological foundations ofhuman experience and
thought. However, in the 'empirically' oriented philosophers oftechnology in
North America another way to approach the relationship between religion and
technology is possible - one that can clarify what is new and different about both
religion and technology in technological culture.
In the work of philosophers of technology Don Ihde and Albert
Borgmann, we find two theories of technology which help to articulate an
understanding of the materiality of modern technology and religion. In the
following two chapters, the work of each of these thinkers will be discussed in
relation to their understandings of technology and how this might be read with an
eye to articulating the relationship between modern technology and modern
religion. However, while Borgmann's work can be read as being compatible with
the more metaphysical or substantive interpretations oftechnology, Don Ihde's
work is an attempt to explicitly reject this approach.
76
For Ihde there are two other forces which operate more concretely than a
technological metaphysics, and it is these forces which provide the ontological
basis upon which technological society is built. The first is the ways that culture
impacts technological development and he considers this to be the primary force
shaping its use and development. Viewing cultures as operating much like
language in the way they shape and form how human beings experience the
world, Ihde argues for the development of interpretative strategies which can be
used for evaluating the positive and negative effects of specifie technologies.
However, Ihde's focus on the impact of culture - over a transcendent
technological force - to shape technologies may not be as free of a metaphysical
bias as he would like. Revealing this may help us to see how by replacing
technology with culture understood as the determinative force we may have a
secularized version of the idea of a religion of technology.
Ihde also focuses on the meaning ofhuman being as another primary
factor which effects this technology/culture relationship. Ihde's
phenomenologie al analysis of the relationship between human beings and their
technologies views their relations as being entirely mediated through the nature of
human embodiment. For Ihde, an human technologies must be understood in how
they reflect, shape and frame our lived experience as embodied beings. It is thus
possible, though admittedly simplistic, to categorize Ihde's focus on embodiment
as an example of a kind ofhumanistl anthropological approach to understanding
technology. What this might mean for understanding modem technology and
modem religion will be the result of the following discussion of his work.
77
3.1 A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Techno-culture
[ ... ] the 'technosphere' contains a presumption towards totality, toward technocracy. It encompasses aIl dimensions of our relations. But the totality remains presumptive only. There remains the difference. Even in the face of ambiguity in which 1 may confuse myself with the machine world [ ... ] there is the possibility of clarifying that difference between my meeting the world 'in the flesh' and my meeting of the world through machines. (TePr: 15)
In the above quote from Technics and Praxis (1979), one of North
America's earliest identifiable works concerned specifically with the philosophy
oftechnology, Don Ihde makes his stand against the false 'presumption towards
totality' that had previously structured the philosophy oftechnology. Ihde's
articulation of the idea that technology is primarily to be understood as mediation
between human perceptions and the world becomes the central point around
which aU ofhis subsequent work revolves. Ihde later complexifies this insight in
his large body of work with tools gleaned from phenomenology and hermeneutics
and can arguably be said to have inaugurated a new movement in the
philosophical study oftechnology. This movement, which is not necessarily
limited to the study of machines or technology normatively understood but
expands to the material realities ofhuman beings and their object relations and
has been adopted by many thinkers influenced by Ihde, he caUs
In Technology and the Lifeworld Ihde claims that "what is essential is to
isolate the direct, non-technologically mediated dimension" ofhumanltechnology
relations in order to contrast this "with precisely those experiences which are
technologically mediated"(16). This is why Ihde uses as an 'imaginative
construct' the idea of a new Eden occupied by a new Adam and Eve to represent
such a non-mediated relationship (12). White he claims this construct is for the
purposes oftaking "a measure upon the range of variations within which humans
shape their forms oflife" he also believes we can find in 'minimalist' cultures -
those cultures that have somehow maintained a closer proximity to our 'stone age'
ancestors - sorne insights into this prior Edenic existence (13). These primitive
peoples are somehow closer to our 'natural' state ofbeing in the Garden - an idea
not too different from the idea of the 'noble savage' and North America as a new
Eden first articulated by sorne of the early colonialist Europeans. According to
Ihde, what this
initial imaginative exercise reveals is that it might be possible for humans to live non-technologically as a kind of abstract possibility - but only on the condition that the environment be that of a garden, isolated, protected and stable. The price of such a non-technological existence is to be enclosed [ ... ] but there is no su ch empirical-historical human form oflife
83
because, long before our remembering, humans moved from aIl gardens to inherit the Earth. (13)
This attempt to invoke various Christian biblical passages may seem innocuous;
but the implicit reference to humanity's 'Fal!' from a state of grace in the God-
protected and stable world of the Garden of Eden implies a theological re-
interpretation of the significance of a sinful this-worldly existence. This
represents Ihde's underlying motivation for the study oftechnology: to find a way
to reconcile today's technological existence and that state ofbeing which defines
us as no longer safely ensconced in the Garden with this original and purer form
of human existence.
Like the remarkable number of other philosophers and religionists who
have tackled the question oftechnology, Ihde's move from theology to
technology lends credence to the speculation that the questions arising from the
study of religion have sorne intrinsic relationship to the questions arising from the
study oftechnology. However, his explicit rejection of the 'transcendental
technology' interpretation is done for reasons ofutility and not because he sees
the onto-theological understanding as overly religious or theological. Ihde
himself is not willing to recognize how much his work has in common with the
European philosophers' evaluation of the onto-theological tradition and their
attempt to think religion and technology together. Despite this critical blindness,
it may be possible to explicate the understanding of a religionltechnology
relationship that infuses Ihde's work after first addressing his own analysis of
technology.
84
3.2 Ihde's Technological Hermeneutic
To enter any human-technology relation is already to 'control' and to 'be controlled.' Once the notion oftechnology in the ensemble is raised, particularly insofar as technologies are embedded in cultural complexes, the question of 'control' becomes even more senseless. Trajectories of development [ ... ] have instrumental 'intentionalities.' Yet at the hermeneutic level, it also has been seen that such trajectories have not always been followed, depending upon the wider and more complex cultural field. The very question of control takes its shape within an implicit, but outdated, metaphysics of determinism. (TeL: 140-141)
In order to re-negotiate the 'outdated' transcendental hypothesis regarding
the controlling effects of technology Ihde develops an analysis of the multiple
inter-relations between human beings, their technologies and the variety of
possible cultural manifestations. He does this by downplaying an understanding
of technology as a singular and monolithic force; instead he focuses on how
technologies mediate human embodied perception and are multistable in their
embedded cultural contexts. For him, embodiment and multiple possibilities
across cultures are the dominant axes in the human-technology-world equation.
In this sense, modem technology for Ihde is both an ambiguous and
multivalent phenomenon, but it does not represent a negative determining force
that would dény human freedom or choice. Even if he also believes that we can
as certain the intentionality inherent in our tools and methods, which implies a
possible controlling 'trajectory of development,' his understanding of intention is
taken from phenomenology where it does not imply a conscious decision on the
part of a creator or user but rather a 'moral direction' in regards to the
technology's eventual embeddedness in a cultural context. For Ihde, a multitude
of possible directions and relations can be ascertained with technologies, aIl of
which can be positioned within a variety ofhurnan-technology-world equations.
85
Ihde explicitly rejects both the substantive (technology as a force and type
of culture) and the instrurnentalist (technologies are neutral) understandings of
tehchnology as unsatisfactory (see 1992: 208 and PPh: 34). Both positions ignore
the importance of the hum an in relation to technology; these inhurnan
interpretations talk about technology without reference to the people who use the
tools and the cultures they use thern in. Ihde does not accept a definition of
technology that does not refer to sorne rnaterial or physical object or thing; he
believes that in order to "count as a technology" there must be a "concrete
cornponent, sorne rnaterial element" (PTe: 48). Therefore, accurate definition of
technology must include "sorne set ofpraxes [ ... ] which humans make ofthese
components" and, most importantly, there must be a "relation between
technologies and the humans who use, design, rnake or rnodify the technologies in
question." (48)
Idhe's focus on the human both for understanding the nature oftechnology
itself and for the human response to its demands is what makes Ihde's work
representative of a kind ofhurnanist anthropological orientation within the
philosophy oftechnology. Ihde's work can clearly be recognized as a response
to the over-determination oftechnology's power as it appears.in the work of
Martin Heidegger and the other classical philosophers oftechnology. While
highly influenced'by Heidegger's early analysis ofthings and equipment in Being
& Time (TePr: 103-129) Ihde is unwilling to accept the negative consequences of
86
Heidegger's articulation ofmodem technology. His rejection of the constraints
imposed by Heidegger's understanding is primarily a rejection ofwhat he feels is
the dystopian idea that aIl technologies will manifest the same meaning.
For Ihde this indeterminacy became obvious to him when he was
confronted with Heidegger's infamous suggestion in one ofhis 1949 lectures in
Bremen that "agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its
essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination
camps" (see Safranski, 1998: 253). For Idhe, this was problematic, not only for
the implied 'moral discrepancy' involved but because - in his words - "as a
pragrnatist and a rigorous phenomenologist, 1 realized this meant, simply, that
such an analysis was useless since it could not discriminate" between different
types of technologies (Selinger, 2006: 271). From this it is clear that, unlike
Heidegger or Albert Borgmann, Ihde's purpose for studying technology is not
motivated by any fears about the danger or problems posed by contemporary
technology. On the contrary, Ihde's comments clarify that his reasons for
studying technology is to articulate technology/human relations in order to create
better technologies.
Ihde claims he is trying to avoid both the "utopian and dystopian
temptations that easily become the sins ofmany interpreters oftechnology"; he
has a "love/hate relationship for technologies" (TeL: 162-163). While he shares
with others of his generation fears about environmental disaster and nuclear
apocalypse he believes they are "possible, although not inevitable"(163). Despite
this dystopian view, Ihde rejects the Heideggerian solution to contemporary
87
technological challenges by tuming to sorne form of a non-human god to save us
and instead believes "we must more than ever look to our own fate, by deeply and
even caringly looking after our technologically textured world"( 163) - a world he
be1ieves shows distinct advantages over aIl other previous worlds due to the
miraculous effec~s oftechnology on our health and life expectancies. He admits
to "rejoicing in modernity" and he believes that this position can be achieved by
cultivating what he calls a Nietzschean 'lightness'(163). Confessing to a
preference for a 'god who can dance,' Ihde believes that cultivating relativism and
indeterminacy can be balanced with "the right weight and Iightness ofmovement"
that infuses our powers of invention and creation. (TeL: 224)
Idhe's position is unequivocally human-centered and, despite his
postphenomenological efforts, attempts to clarify the essential difference between
our experiences ofthe world 'in the flesh' and our experiences through machines.
This more anthropological orientation inverts the traditional approach by
simu1taneous1y invoking the invariability ofhuman embodiment in relations with
technology and highlighting its essentially ambiguous nature by noting the
varieties of different cultural manifestations of technological uses and practices.
Despite his disavowals Ihde's project shows how he nonetheless produces
sorne of the same metaphysical errors he wams against and thus continues to
participate in metaphysical philosophy. This opens the way to examining sorne
e1usive clues to understanding how Ihde's theological background may have lent
itse1f to this contradictory position.
88
3.3 Ibde's Tecbnological Life-world
There is no Eden, and by implication there can be no Paradise, because to be a historical, embodied human, is to be immersed in the essential ambiguity which [is] an invariant feature·of our engagement with technology. We are tied to our own fate and responsibility [ ... ] The Earth has been delivered to our care and we do not now dare avoid facing the critical ambiguity which belongs essentially to our situation. (llide, 1984: 120-121)
According to llide in his Technalagy and the Lifewarld: Fram Garden ta
Earth (1990), what is needed is "a much more radically demythologized story of
the structures and limits ofhuman-technology and of the non-technological
possibilities of relation to an environment, or 'world'" (TeL: 17). To this end, he
uses the metaphor of the Garden - which he somehow sees as a cross-cultural
mythic metaphor - as a "limit-idea to delimit sorne ofthose aspects of the human
experience which remain in sorne sense face-to-face with others and the world."
(17)
For Ihde there are basically two forms of the human-technology life-
world. The first is sensory and acknowledges our physical, embodied experiences
with technologies; the second is interpretative and acknowledges how cultural
relations effect our understanding of those experiences. These two types of
perceptions Ihde refers to as microperception and macroperception (TeL: 29-30).
Microperception is what Husserl and Merleau-Ponty understood as perception
itself but which Idhe specifies as sensory perception. Macroperception is the way
in which culture forms our perception and any sensory perception is already a
mediated or secondary phenomenon. For llide, only macroperception can be
89
analyzed phenomenologically. The immediacy and subjectivity of experience
means it cannot be adequately analyzed but can only be interpreted once its
cultural manifestations are understood. As Verbeek notes in his article from the
Dutch volume on the American philosophers of technology, for Idhe
just as perception-in-itself and consciousness-in-itself do not exist, neither does technology-in-itself. Just as perception can be understood intentionally only as perception-of, and consciousness only consciousnessof, so technology can only be understood as technology-in-order-to. The 'in-order-to' indicates that technologies always and only function in concrete, praxical contexts and cannot be technologies apart from such contexts. (1997: 133)
This is why Ihde develops a tripartite analysis ofhumanltechnology relations-
according to the three different ways in which hum an beings' experiences are
mediated through technologies. The first type is that of artifact relations (the
world is perceived through an artifact, tool or machine, for instance glasses). This
form ofhuman-technology-world relations occupies much ofldhe's thought since
it pertains to how technologies express and transform our initial embodied
perceptions. The second types are alterity relation (experience is the tool of
technology itself which takes on a role of quasi-othemess in our relationship to
it); in these types technology is perceived and experienced in an 'encounter with
the other' and becomes almost like an autonomous and independent entity. These
are at both ends of a spectrum of our embodied relations to technology: with the
first type technologies are almost part of our identity, with the other they are
perceived as another identity altogether.' The third type ofhumanltechnology
relations is that of background relations (technology forms the field of our
1 see Verbeek's discussion in Achterhuis, 2001: 132.
90
perceptions and experiences). All these relations take as their basis the human
perceptual body. However, Ihde's complexification of the ways in which hum an
bodies perceive and experience reality through technologies cannot escape sorne
basic problems.
Ihde inherits from Heidegger (though paying homage to Husserl and
detouring through Merleau-Ponty) a concentration on phenomenology as the best
way to approach the nature of the human-technology relationship - primarily by
contrasting and viewing it through the prior, and more authentic, human-lifeworld
relationship. Philosophical phenomenology primarily represents a modem
attempt to overcome the Cartesian subject-object distinction by acknowledging
that human beings cannot be thought of independently of the worlds in which they
live. Thus, in phenomenology there is no subject-object bifurcation, the 'subject'
becoming human and the 'object' being lifeworld. The interconnectedness of the
human-lifeworld pairing is called intentionality: the conscious subject always
intends the object of experience.
This position takes as a presupposition that human consciousness can
never be understood in isolation (a consciousness-in-itself); rather it is always
consciousness-of-something as weIl as perception-of-something. Human beings
experience things when they are in use - what is called in Heidegger's language
the in-order-to (Woraujhin). Therefore, for human beings there can be no direct,
unmediated and uninterpreted access to reality.
However, Ihde breaks with Heidegger's later mode of questioning and
rejects his method of 100 king at technologies as manifestations of the larger
91
technological way of disclosing a world. He looks instead at particular
technologies and machines to see what particular modes ofbeing are disclosed
and what specifie forms of human experience are being represented. This appears
to make Ihde's interpretation an instrumentalist one (Le., technology as only
tools). However, Ihde's adoption of a hybrid phenomenological-hermeneutic
approach is his attempt to counter such an understanding of his work.
Ihde takes from Heidegger's early work the distinction between
Zuhandenheit (readiness-to-hand). and Vorhandenheit (present-at-hand); but he
does not accept Heidegger's later claim that modern technology is no longer an
authentic form of technë or craft. As Heidegger originally noted, and Ihde agrees,
every technology is a tool which in use (Vorhanden) is different than when it is
waiting to be used (Zuhanden). Ihde accepts Heidegger's conclusion that each
tool is related to a context; in itself it is nothing, but as equipment it is part of a
meaningful whole. Therefore, equipment has an 'instrumental intentionality': it is
always understood for what it can do and the context in which it is used. When
used in practical activity a tool is a means of experiencing the world rather than
just being an object of experience. This focus on experience leads Ihde to the
work of Merleau-Ponty and his phenomenology of perception. From him, he
takes his emphasis on'embodied relations and mediated experiences of the world
as the primary ontological knowledge of the world.
It should not be surprising to anyone familiar with sorne of the basic
problems in twentieth-century phenomenology that Ihde's phenomenological
studies of technology is referred to in discussing the relationship between
92
technology and religion. The modem phenomenological approach, inspired by
the work of Husserl, has often been criticized for an over emphasis on the role of
subjectivity and human consciousness in the attempt to understand the
phenomenon under analysis. Husserl's hope was to delineate an objective
position from which to discover the essence or truth of phenomenon, and thus
reveal 'the things themselves,' by bracketing out (and thereby eliminating from
the equation) the presuppositions and prejudices- of the conscious subject.
One attempt to correct this problem is that of Merleau-Ponty, who utilized
the phenomenological approach while acknowledging the primacy of the effects
of perception on human experience and the understanding of phenomena
themselves. In many ways, Ihde's work can be seen as a continuation ofMerleau
Ponty's primary focus on hum an embodiment in the relationship between hum ans
and their technologies. However, the attempt to ascertain understandings of
human experience and perception will nonetheless threaten to reify the human
subject in a determinant fashion. Despite Ihde's own attempt to show that the
conscious subject is not a monolithic entity over and against the object of analysis
- in this case technblogy - but rather constitute a mutually constructed
phenomenon, he also must struggle with this problem.
Ihde spins out from this the insight that if our sensory perception changes
when a tool is in use (our reach is extended, our sight is farther, our hearing is
heightened) we thus experience the world through these technologies in a way
that makes human experience and perception - not any technology itself - the
primary and determinative aspect. However, he must balance this with his
93
previous acceptance of the intentionality of technology and the particular cultures
in which they appear. In order to consolidate this insight, Ihde develops a multi
nuanced phenomenology of technology that expands on this insight.
Idhe develops a theoretical position which he claims is both post
phenomenological and post-subjectivist by focusing on what he believes to be the
one invariant, non-relativistic, and irreducible element of the equation: the human
body that experiences, perce ives and interprets its technological lifeworld. In
response to what he perceives as the overemphasis on the dystopian effect of a
determinative technological episteme, as he believes is found in Heidegger and
the other classical philosophers of technology, he claims that embodiment is the
one invariant aspect of human being that supplies the final point from which we
need reduce no further.
3.4 Ihde's Onto-theological Body
Ihde's humanism, while admittedly not unequivocal in its
anthropocentrism, maintains that a non-technologically mediated human being
can exist - even if only speculatively. This is what his use of the human
technology-world equation implies, even if only as a heuristic device (TeL: 14).
Such an analysis requires that this creature must exist in sorne true form, or el se it
would be impossible to ever develop a phenomenological account ofhuman
technology-world relations. There must exist a fantastic body, a constructed
Platonic body, which is unmediated and unmarked by any experience or
perception, in order to claim the priority of embodiment in human-world
relations.
94
Ihde refers to this 'body' as the primitive ofall phenomenological
analyses. He goes so far as to claim that human perceptual bodily experience of
its environment is the ontological foundation of all knowledge and experience
(TeL: 25). Embodiment is the essential difference, the central core, from which
the phenomenological analysis of technology-human relations takes its constancy
and pervasiveness (TeL: 17). He even tums to feminist analyses of the gendered
body to legitimate his claim for an essentialized notion of human embodiment as
the basic constituent ofall human experience (BoT: 16-34,70). While noting that
this is a contested thesis in feminist works, Ihde nonetheless willfully ignores the
feminist critique which rejects this essentialism as an over-determination of a
socially constructed situation - a metaphysical presumption that represents a
continuation ofa patriarchal system. (see Butler, 1993)
Admittedly, Idhe never talks about embodiment in the singular, as 'the'
body, but always in the plural, as 'bodies'. Idhe does not argue that everyone will
have the same experiences but only that their experiences will always refer back
to the necessarily embodied nature of experience. In his recent book, Bodies in
Technology (2002), he discusses issues that have arisen with the advent of
computer technologies and their potential ability to create virtual replicas of
reality. He acknowledges that most of the fantastic claims of one day becoming
disembodied minds floating in cyber-space are just that - fantasies. Instead he
acknowledges the material, embodied reality of using computers and information
95
technologies that are so c1early missing from most cyber-imaginings. He makes
the point that, like earlier technologies, contemporary information technologies
are, in his words, 'epistemology engines' that help to construct the ways in which
subjectivity, knowledge and perception intertwine in how human beings
understand themselves and their worlds (BoT: 67-87, 134-137). While he never
argues that all human experience and understanding of embodied experiences are
equaUy effected by these knowledge machines, he sees these dominant metaphors
as helping to create an overarching and totalizing understanding ofhow
embodiment itself can be experienced.
Even if Ihde rejects the idea of an overarching technological paradigm that
shapes the human life-world in favour of multiple lifeworlds shaped by multiple
technologies, his reliance on the notions of the fantastic phenomenological body
and the 'epistemology engines' that shape our understandings of bodies raises the
spectre of a metaphysical understanding of embodiment. This reliance on
embodiment, even if it rejects any notion of Cartesian subjectivity or any form of
an objective human consciousness, nonetheless shares in the modem humanist
project ofmaking 'the human' in someway distinct, and analytically
distinguishable, from the world it inhabits. Ihde believes his utilization of a
hermeneutics of culture to contexualize the ways in which the human is
technologically mediated somehow escapes such a totalization. However, even a
mediated and situated embodiment would remain a part of the humanist tradition
- a tradition which never strays too far from the question of religion. This gives
us a clue to untangling how his early work in theology with Paul Tillich continues
96
to structure his thought. What this may reveal is sorne insights into how
contemporary human religiosity - what Ihde himself once called a 'material
spirituality' - continues to infuse and manifest itself in technological culture.
3.5 Technology - A Secular Spirituality
Technology and the human are so closely intertwined that to examine one is necessarily to examine the other. In this sense a secular spirituality is necessarilya 'material' spirituality in that technics must be a central theme ofits inquiry. (CoP: 90-91)
While his hermeneuticaUy inspired analysis of the technologicallifeworld
which human beings inhabit remains primarily a phenomenological one, it is
Ihde's articulation of the relationship between the human and technology that may
reflect a certain secular-Christian theology. Ihde's understanding of the meaning
ofbeing human in technological culture owes much to that oftheologian Paul
Tillich. As a young divinity student, Ihde studied theology under the tutelage of
Tillich and in various autobiographical references Ihde has praised Tillich for
exciting his interest in European existential and phenomenological philosophies
and for broadening his interest in religion to include aU of culture.
As discussed previously (# l.4.l) Tillich sees our culture's relationship to
technology as representing a kind of quasi-religion - a false and inadequate
manifestation of the human search for ultimate meaning. However, for Tillich,
technology represents an endeavor that, when done with the proper aUegiance of
means to end, can be a spirituaUy and religiously beneficial project. Ihde shares
this ide a that science and technology, when raised to the level of uncritical
worship, becomes a quasi-religion. In an article in the Journal of International
Studies in Philosophy, Ihde discusses the history of the fusion of science and
technology and the nature of its belief structure:
In the process, science--whether advertently or inadvertently--itself took on a quasi-theological characteristic. To be critical of the new 'true faith' was to be, in effect, 'heretical' now called 'irrational.' Functionally speaking, this resistance to criticism serves to keep the critics externally located, as 'others.' And while none ofthis is news, it maintains itself within the institutional characteristics of technoscience's own belief structure. (1997: 45-54)
97
In this discussion of the history of science and technology, Ihde makes reference
to the inherently religious-like nature found in the contemporary institutions of
techno-science but, as the above quote makes clear, he feels it to be an
inappropriate and false belief system. This is not all Ihde inherited from Tillich;
he also inherited an understanding of culture as being the "form of religion" and
religion as being the "substance of culture" and, thus, he accepts Tillich's thesis
of the ways in which culture and religion mutually constitute one another (Tillich,
1959: 42). This is important for Ihde's understanding of the relationship between
modern technology and religion.
In several passages from his book Consequences of Phenomenology
(1986) Ihde makes reference to the history of the relationship between science and
technology to religion. As he notes, before technology and science were married
together in their modern formulation as techno-science, "technics as religion was
what we once termed magic"(CoP: 83). The history of pre-modern technology is
also the history of religion, and this is why understanding pre-modern
technologies as proto-science is inappropriate. He also notes that the relationship
oftechnics in 'actual' religious praxis has been equally overlooked and that
98
"prayers, meditative practices, rituals may, of course, not utilize tools or artifacts,
and may be purely techniques - but this is rarely the case" (83-84). Ihde then
goes on to talk about how, even if the artifacts and technologies of religion are
removed, there remains a quality to religious technics that is no different than that
ofhistorical pre-modern technological magic; and this is what he caUs "the
hermeneutic dimension oftechnics" (84).
For Idhe, both technology and religion have an interpretative dimension:
they are both attempts by human beings to mediate the relationship between
themselves and their environment. Whereas human beings once used religion to
mediate their relations to the world through symbol and language, it is now
technology that mediates these relations and to which, as Ihde believes, a
hermeneutical approach is necessary. According to another passage from the
same book, Ihde says that "the deeper question of technics and the human remains
one about the variable possibilities of seeing itself. And that is a question of
fundamental hermeneutics [ ... ] technology as a way of seeing is hermeneutic."
(90-91)
For Ihde hermeneutics is the necessary method for understanding the
meaning ofhuman being, and technology is a form ofhermeneutic. Ihde's
philosophy of technology acts as a hermeneutic of technological culture. Since
one of the purposes ofphilosophy is to "provide a framework or 'paradigm'for
understanding" (TeL: 9), then it is technology acting hermeneutically which must
supply that framework.
99
Iftechnology is the continuation of the role religion once played, then we
may adopt many oflhde's observations for understanding how religion currently
operates. Through Ihde's work, we may see that religion in its technological
manifestations is a mu ch more complex, nuanced and highly human-oriented
phenomenon than previously imagined - one which operates, if not harmoniously
in its explicit forms, then at least in an implicit conjunction with technology.
Thus, we will have to reject an outdated and problematic religion in favour of a
more complex understanding of techno-religion. Or, as Ihde puts it, what is
needed in order to examine the intimate hum an and technology relationship is the
creation of a "secular spirituality" which is "necessarily a material spirituality in
that technics must be a central theme ofits inquiry" (CoP: 90-91). The following
chapter on Albert Borgmann is helpful for pursuing su ch a possibility.
100
Chapter 4
Albert Borgmann: Technology and Redemption
... Christian standards have entered into competition with technological ones, and this in turn shows that technology has become such a profoundly established pattern that we now measure Christianity against it. If a more profound critique and reform of technology are possible, one must act on that possibility. To that end, and to avoid final entrapment by technology, we must grasp it as a whole and undertake a total critique. (Borgmann, 2003:84)
The above quote from Power Failure: Christianity and the Culture of
Technology (2003) appears in a recent collection of essays representing over
thirty years of Albert Borgmann's philosophical analyses of modern technology.
In this work and most ofhis other work on technology and culture Borgmann
views modem religion and technology as competitors which arise from the same
impetus and source. Borgmann has been identified as one of the most influential
philosophers of technology in North America and, as Paul Durbin notes, his work
is often understood to be "the only contribution to philosophy oftechnology that
has given rise to its own tradition or school ofthought." (Durbin, 1998: 10)
Borgmann's philosophical response to technology is best understood when
the religious nature ofhis critique and ofhis alternative to technology is fully
articulated. From Borgmann's analysis oftechnology we may understand how
the intimate, material relationship between modem technology and religion could
be more adequately formulated. Borgmann's work is Iimited by many of the
same issues and problems addressed in chapter one, and to sorne degree he
replicates sorne of the problems discussed in chapter two. However, his
101
comprehensive analysis of the quotidian and practical realities of modem
technology provides sorne directions for the study oftechnology. For our
purposes, Borgmann' s understanding may lead to the development of a material
philosophy of religion in technological culture.
4.1 Borgmann's World of Technology
Teehnology is not radie aIl y liberating at aU. Instead, it is an ever more definite template of reality. And the human condition is correspondingly ever more tightly pattemed [ ... ] The passage through technology, on the other hand, opens up a realm of concreteness and simplicity. Since technology is more definite, more limiting, and closer at hand than we have thought it also discloses a more determinative and foreeful alternative than we had dared to hope. That alternative is the world of simple things and praetiees; this is now the realm of the holy. (Borgmann, 1984: 319-320 = 2003: 93)
For Borgmann, modem technology by itselfis not, indeed it cannot be, the
solution to the problems that beset the modem human condition. Why? Beeause
technology, and specifically modem technology, creates "definite template[s] of
realities" and in effect closes off rather than opens up possibilities. Modem
technology reduces and limits the ways in which individuals and cultures can
experience and know reality. This is the central characteristic of contemporary
life: modem technology creates a specific, narrow way ofknowing and
experiencing the world. Because any technological solution can never escape this
larger teehnologieal pattern or paradigm, mere technological solutions only reify
problems more and more definitively rather than countering them.
102
As the above quote makes clear, Borgmann also believes that it is only by
passing 'through' modern technology that the possibility for reform and change
may be possible. For him, it is exactly because technology is so limiting and
definitive that it requires equally definite and concrete counter-practices to
redeem the technology crisis we currently face. Most importantly, the solution
must be sought from sorne source other than technology itself - a forceful
alternative now to be found in the 'holy' realm of 'simple things and practices.'
At the core of Borgmann' s critique of contemporary technology and
culture is his analysis of the overall pattern of living modem technology
promotes. Borgmann caUs this the 'device paradigm' - highlighting the way in
which a basic pattern is inherent in the use and implementation of aIl modem
technologies. This pattern encourages disengagement from more authentic and
satisfying ways ofbeing in the world and thus produces a world of alienated,
unsatisfied and even antagonistic human beings. Ironically, this negative pattern
is produced by the very promises inherent in our faith in modem technologies -
the modem promise of freedom from toil, struggle and work.
Understanding Borgmann's analysis of modern technology through an
evaluation ofhis advocacy ofnew 'simple things and practices' helps produce a
theoretical position which acknowledges the material reality of religious practice
in technological culture in a critically viable and useful way. Just as Borgmann's
philosophy has been noted for its relevance in analyzing particular, empirical
technological developments, his analysis and proposed solution may help to
construct a material philosophy of religion. Borgmann's work, his 'philosophy in
103
the service ofthings' as David Strong calls it, may he helpful for discovering a
new way to categorize and articulate the problems presented by the now
necessarily quotidian, material and non-metaphysical reality of religion in
technological culture. Our analyses and understandings ofmodem religion must
become aware of the material realities of religions in technological culture,
accepting the way in which it has conceded its place of primacy to the
technological paradigm, and concentrate on ways in which modem religion too
must he understood to he 'in the service ofthings.' (Strong et al., 2000: 335)
4.2 Heidegger's American Heir
More so than any other of the other North American philosophers of
technology inspired by his analysis, Borgmann follows most comfortably in
Heidegger's footsteps. Born and raised in Freiburg in Bresgau where Husserl and
Heidegger worked, Borgmann's future philosophical interests and orientation
clearly arise from his natal origins. In a revealing paper "Cosmopolitanism &
Provincialism: On Heidegger' s Errors and Insights" (1992) and in his own
hiographical essay "Finding Philosophy" (1993) the main themes ofBorgmann's
later work can be discemed. The intellectual atmosphere of Borgmann's own
rural, intellectual German upbringing sets the tone for his later work. The
intellectual atmosphere of c1assical education, liberal Catholicism, nationalist
anxiety, and the belief in the relevance of intellectual interventions in all these
endeavors shape Borgmann' s thinking. In this sense, Borgmann is one of the
direct intellectual descendents of Heidegger and a natural heir to his
understanding of modem technology.
104
Borgmann's journey along the path laid out by Heidegger is not simply
derivative. Following his emigration to the United States in the mid-twentieth
century Borgmann moves away from Heidegger in ways typical of American
philosophy. As Pieter Tijmes points out in his contribution to American
Philosophers ofTechnology, Borgmann is "from a European perspective [ ... ] the
most American of the American philosophers oftechnology." (Achterhuis, 2001:
12)
Borgmann' s explication of specifie instances of technologization, in
which the technological device (Gestel!) is clearly manifest makes his work a
more pragmatic approach to the significance of modem technology. Borgmann's
work not only intellectually argues against the Western philosophical bias which
favours disengaged theory; it also articulates the fundamental significance of
practice in creating and shaping our world and thus offers a challenge to how we
are to understand philosophy itself.
By focusing on the quotidian aspects of existence modern technologies
increasingly usurped, Borgmann's philosophy calls for redemptive forms of
practice within contemporary technological culture. What is most pertinent to the
foregoing discussion is that, for Borgmann, the neglected foci of daily life which
he would revive requires a renewed celebratory, communal and committed
approach which can only be described as religious. This redemptive calI contains
an inherent understanding of modem religion and its relationship to technology,
105
and it may offer a new way to understand the meaning of religion in modemity.
While religion and technology are fundamentally different forms of life, this
opposition is elided when Borgmann uses religious-like practice as the only
satisfYing way to counter technology. Such elision illuminates how it is possible
to construct a philosophy of religion that acknowledges the materiality of religion
and to reconsider religion as a quotidian, non-transcendent and practice-oriented
part of life.
4.3 Broken Promises: Modern Technology's Failed Soteriology
Borgmann's analysis oftechnology is indebted to Heidegger's philosophy
in several important ways. The tirst is to Heidegger's early work in Being &
Time. The technological worlding going on is deeply ingrained and "difficult or
perhaps impossible" to see (1984: 35). Our technologically mediated experiences
represent a kind oftaken for granted common sense and hence is partially
inaccessible to critical thought. For these reasons "it is only wh en a pattern of
procedure or a paradigm [ ... ] begins to fail and be questioned and perhaps
challenged by a new procedure that the paradigm emerges as such"(35). As Drew
Leder points out, this is Borgmann's indebted reference to Heidegger's
understanding of Vorhandenheit, the moment when the tool ceases to be
Zuhanden, i.e., a simple instrumentality. Then its status as an object and its
thingly qualities are revealed (Leder, 1988: 19). In fact, it is only because
Borgmann views aIl modern technological development as brokering in broken
promises that its inadequacy can be comprehended.
106
While he brings to the foreground both the opacity of its operations and of
its failures, Borgmann notes that technology since the Enlightenment has played
both an important constitutive and constructive role in shaping and forming the
world in which we currently find ourselves. However, it has always been
presented as the inevitable and desirous outcome of those other elements that have
overtly concerned modern thinkers in political, economic, ethical and scientific
realms. While technology was always seen as a mere byproduct of these more
important endeavors, it was also the proof of their efficacy and rightness. The
importance of technology has been both promoted and negated within narratives
of modernity.
For Borgmann the question this raises is not why but how. The answer to
this question at the core of modern technology can be given only with the
questioning of the negative impact of modern technology on our lives. The
promises oftechnology that have "fueled and disguised the gigantic endeavors
that have given our time its character" are broken (TCCL: 39). The age of
technology, far from being the realization ofmodernity's hopes, is an age of
broken promises.
The secular soteriology of modernity gives technology the power for "the
general procurement of liberty and prosperity in the principled and effective
manner that is derived from modern science" (TCCL: 39). Technologyas
salvation promises to "bring the forces of nature and culture under control, to
liberate us from misery and toi!, and to enrich our lives" (41). This promise only
"presents the technological enterprise in broad and ambiguous outline" and points
107
only to general and non-specifie Iiberatory possibilities. Hence, "it keeps our
aspirations present and out of focus at the same time"(3). Such obtuseness both
reveals and conceals the fault that lies within the development of technology in aIl
its various guises. Borgmann's daim is that "at least part of the reason why the
implementation of the promise oftechnology has become so clouded lies in the
character of its development" (39). Though 'character flaw' may seem like a mild
rebuke, it is exactly this which Borgmann's major work Technology and the
Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (1984) points to as the
major crisis of contemporary culture. How does a character flaw reach the status
of individual and cultural disaster?
Borgmann does discuss large scale examples of how the promises of
technology have gone awry, the possibility of nuclear and environmental disasters
being those which have garnered the most concern. Yet this is merely the tip of
the iceberg; aIl technological developments go awry, from the most insignificant
to the monumental, because aIl modern technologies fail to truly live up to the
promise of freeing human beings. What is interesting is how initially minor
Borgmann' s identification of the nature of this broken promise is. The initial
promises of liberation appear to have been met with new technological
developments securing basic human necessities such as food and shelter, and
medical developments freeing us from disease and the effects of once debilitating
accidents. Increasingly, the focus changed to the procuring of freedom from less
fundamental issues to more 'frivolous' needs: "the initial genuine feats of
liberation appear to be continuous with the procurement offrivolous comfort" and
this is aIl due to the technological pattern Borgmann discerns in modem
technology as a whole. (TCCL: 39)
108
Though innocuous at first, but increasingly disturbing as he works through
its consequences, this is the core ofBorgmann's critique of the technological
paradigm. It is not the apocalyptic potential for the rare technology to bring forth
absolute destruction which concerns him but the cumulative effects of the
continuaI search for technologies of ease and comfort which he views as the true
dangers of the technological world. As modem human beings continually seek
more and more refinements of technologies of ease and comfort the debilitating
result is that it leads us farther and farther from the real world, from true reality
and from authentic engagement with life affirming practices - this is Borgmann's
reworking of Heidegger's Gestel! which he calls the 'device paradigm.' This can
be countered, but only through the cultivation of a new and clearly religious way
of being in the world.
Before articulating the full sense of Borgmann's redemptive call for a
return to a more authentic engagement with the real world, and c1arifying the
inherently religious nature ofthis call, the disastrous consequences of the
technological character of modem life needs to be more fully addressed. It is
especially important to emphasize that Borgmann's critique is not limited to
machines and material technologies, but also "things of nature and culture and
social relations too are being transformed according to the pattern of the
device"(TCCL: 49). When any relation, practice or activity in everything from
artistic to economic and political realms is pursued only in order to achieve its
109
end, then the device paradigm mIes. In this sense, Borgmann addresses both the
ontological as weIl as the more ontic understanding of technology as both
mundane things and practices and a metaphysical ordering of aIl that can be
known.
In Technology and the Character ofContemporary Life this understanding
is coupled with an awareness of the irresponsibility of western thought to
adequately address questions of materiality and of quotidian practice. Borgmann
argues from a position which recognizes the ways in which philosophy has
abdicated its responsibility to address human practice and material culture; this is
apparent in the historical dominance of metaphysical philosophy, and, now, of a
metaphysical science. Western thought has been so intent on solving theoretical
puzzles and developing blueprints of reality that when they become actualized
materially in our technologies and practices the price for human beings to be paid
is losing touch with reality altogether.
4.4 Material Metaphysies: The Deviee Paradigm versus Foeal Things and
Practices
[ ... ] the basic idea is that technology exhibits a pattern or paradigm of taking up with reality -- contextual things are displaced by machineries that provide a commodity with initially beneficial but increasingly debilitating consequences. The antidote is a recovery of things that engage us fully and orient our lives -- focal things, secured in focal practices. (PFa, 2003: 122)
In all his work, Borgmann offers an analysis of contemporary
technological culture that is familiar in sorne ways and unfamiliar in others. Like
110
many critics of technology, Borgmann sees in modem technology a danger to a
more authentic, and more rewarding existence. Unlike other critics such as
Jacques Ellul whom he may at first appear to have much in common with,
Borgmann's analysis moves beyond mere rejection ofall modem technology.
Through his identification of the device paradigm Borgmann gives us a way to
analyze and articulate specifie instances of technologization. This is why
Borgmann is understood by the Dutch philosophers to be an 'empirical'
philosopher and why he himselfbelieves his philosophy re-negotiates the pitfalls
and distortions ofboth the transcendent, essentialist position and the
instrumentalist understandings ofteehnology. Borgmann's philosophy of
technology takes seriously the 'conditions ofpossibility' which underlie modern
technology with an eye to the consequential realities of the day-to-day use of
specifie technologies. Borgmann attempts to negotiate the abyss between the
ontologie al and the ontie interpretation oftechnology.
Borgmann finds the clue to his analysis in the broken promises which are
part of the foundations ofmodemity (see # 4.3). He identifies these foundations
by answering the question of "how the promise of liberty and prosperity was
specified and given a definite pattern of implementation" in order to show why it
has failed (TCCL: 41). The idea of their necessary availability is inherent in the
promise of modem technology and reduces existentially satisfying techniques to
mere commodities. This availability must not impose any burdens and
"something is available in this sense if it has been rendered instanteous,
ubiquitous, safe and easy." (TCCL: 41)
111
Using one ofhis favourite examples, Borgmann discusses the ways in
which heat and warmth were previously procured by stoves or fireplaces and the
processes used to procure this end were neither instantaneous nor ubiquitous nor
safe and easy. On the contrary, the difficulty ofproviding warmth and heat
required certain skills and a kind of attention that the demand for availability and
ease in modem technologies does not. As weIl, the search for heat and warmth
was intimately engaged with social structures in the family and community as
people worked hard to procure and prepare the materials necessary for making
fire. The creation of efficient and effective heating systems and technologies not
only made warmth readily available but reduced the need for heat to a
commodified end. This is an 'example of why modem technologies eliminate the
social, cultural and even personal significance that had previously oriented the
human search for heat and warmth. Modem devices disburden and relieve us not
on1y of the difficult tasks for which they were designed but also of the entire
world of meaning they invoked. This is the world in which devices, commodities
require no skill, attention or engagement on the part oftheir users.
For Borgmann, this dislocation from a world ofmeaning is most apparent
in the difference between a thing and a device. Borgmann' s understanding of a
thing is somewhat Jess obscure than Heidegger's for whom the thing "gathers the
fourfold of earth, sky, mortals and divinities" but is explicitly indebted to it
nonetheless (Heidegger, 1971). For Borgmann, a thing "is inseparable from its
context [ ... ] from our commerce with the thing and its world, namely,
engagement with the thing's world. In calling forth a manifold engagement, a
112
thing necessarily provides more than one commodity "(TCCL: 41). Borgmann
adopts Heidegger's understanding of the thing understood as the way in which
pre-technological culture's creations pu lied together a variety of existentially
significant meanings - Heidegger's aforementioned fourfold. Not only were such
things grounded in a world of meaning, thereby ensuring that their everyday use
provided an autochthonous reality for their users, but the thing actually focused
and clarified these meanings. This is the sense ofthe word 'focus' taken from
optics and geometry Borgmann invokes to suggest that "a focus gathers the
relations of its context and radiates into its surroundings and informs them"
(TCCL: 197). Hence, for Borgmann, "to speak of focal things is to emphasize the
central point twice." (TCCL:199)
Borgmann's device negatively mirrors the more engaged ways in which a
thing contains multiple meanings and creates multiple social and cultural
relationships. For example, in regards to the search for warmth, Borgmann points
out that the Latin word focus originally meant hearth. The social and
metaphysical importance that the fireplace or hearth had in pre-modem cultures
provided a focus for meaning: " ... a stove used to fumish more than mere warmth.
It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and lei sure of a family and
gave the house a center"(TCCL: 41-42). Even today, the English ward 'hearth'
still contains mu ch of its earlier Latin meaning and still metaphorically represents
the personal and spiritual center of home and family. While Borgmann's ex ample
references a distinctly Euro-derivative architectural phenomenon, it may be
possible to find historical analogues, for example, in both China and lndia where
stoves, ovens and fire have had both tremendous symbolic as weIl as practical
importance.
113
In contrast to the thing, Borgmann's idea ofa device is that which
"procures" and "disburdens us of other elements." These burdens "are taken over
by the machinery of the device. The machinery makes no demands on our skill,
strength or attention, and it is less demanding the less it makes its presence feit.
In the progress oftechnology, the machinery of a device has therefore a tendency
to become concealed or to shrink" (TCCL: 42). The normative understanding of
the means/ends distinction as pertaining to the difference between function and
machinery becomes less and less obvious: "In the general case, it is very
questionable how clearly and radically means and ends can be distinguished
without doing violence to the phenomenon. In the case of the technological
device, however, the machinery can be changed radically without threat to the
identity and familiarity of the function of the device" (TCCL: 43). We see this
when the machinery of a time piece changes from clockwork and gears to silicon
chips: both remain functionally clocks, but the machinery is radically different.
The importance of this for understanding the character of modem technology is
that only the end, the singular commodity that is produced, is considered
important. The eventual disappearance of the mechanical object entirely, for
instance as in the development of analogue recordings of music where the
recorded object is distinct as an object to digital recordings where the machinery
becomes entirely invisible, is the primary consequence of the inevitable progress
of technology.
114
In Borgmann's philosophy oftechnology, there is a way 'through'
technology to another place where the limits of the device pattern inherent in
modem technology no longer rules: where technological practices can be
replaced with new, more satisfying and liberating, ways of doing things.
Borgmann's suggestion is not only referring to a critical understanding ofhow
modem technologies create 1irhits and boundaries; it also caUs for a change in our
physical relationships to the worlds of meaning we interactwith and create
through our techniques and practices. Borgmann's philosophy oftechnology is a
caU for a renewed, focused and engaged relationship with material reality, for a
"world of simple things and practices." This for Borgmann is the "realm of the
holy" (PFa: 93).
Borgmann does not advocate either an utter rejection of modem
technology nor a nostalgie return to sorne idyllic pa st. When discussing the
impact of technology on the natural environment, he notes that "the brute force of
technology [ ... ] exists now and cannot be wished away" (TCCL:194). He feels
that an appropriate relationship to the technological pattern can become clear only
through our experiences of wilderness and the natural world. He believes that
eloquent reality can still be experienced and revealed precisely because the
natural world now exists only as islands in the ocean of modem technology: "Like
a temple or a holy precinct, the wilderness is encircled and marked off from the
ordinary realm oftechnology" (TCCL: 191). Unlike in previous epochs, wh en
human structures and enclosures "established a cosmos and habitat in the chaos of
wilderness, the wildemess now appears as a sacred place," which effectively
115
inverts the traditional relationship between the sacred and profane (TCCL: 191).
When experiencing these oases we "experience ourselves in a new way," and we
are so fully engaged precisely because of their uniqueness. Thus we have the
chance to re-Ieam "what it is to recognize something as other and greater than
ourselves"; and in the wilderness "we let things be in the fullness of their
dimensions, and so they are more profoundly alive and eloquent" (TCCL: 190,
192). Nature in technological culture acts as a kind of focallens to bring into
stark relief just how impoverished and empty our experiences with technology
are.
The consequence of this reevaluation of the relationship between nature
and civilization in modemity is that we can le am from our experiences that "pre
technological things are not mere remnants of an irretrievable order but attain a
new splendor in the midst oftechnology" (TCCL: 195). These experiences teach
us that we can revive, if not the techniques of earlier times and places, then at
least the existential attitude we take towards the technologies we use. A partial
response to the 'forgetfulness ofbeing' question raised by Heidegger, this is an
answer to the question" ... how are we to recover orientation in the oblivious and
distracted era oftechnology when the great embodiments ofmeaning, the works
of art, have lost their focusing power?"(TCCL: 198)
This reevaluation of our experiences with nature over against our
technological practices and tools has analogues in other things and practices
which can serve similarly revealing functions. Borgmann claims that this is what
Heidegger himself means in his discussions of the thing, be it a jug or a classical
116
Greek temple, and it is only when their orienting force is understood that the
debilitating effects of our own technological outlook will be revealed (TCCL:
199). In Borgmann 's estimation, the "things that gather the fourfold" (what he
calls focal things and practices) are 'inconspicuous and humble' and 'scattered
and ofyesteryear' and they 'flourish at the margins ofpubIlc attention' (TCCL:
199). He does not believe it is possible to retum to the world of these things but
rather they attain a new splendor and revelatory power in a technological context.
Borgmann uses two examples to illuminate his discussion and to reiterate his
central point regarding the focused commitment and practice that are required:
long-distance running and the practices around meal preparation and ingestion, or
what he calls the 'culture ofthe table'.
Borgmann believes that sorne aspect ofthese two practices are universal,
or at least relatable to most human beings, and hence can serve as examples of
what he means by focal practices. These two activities are at either end of a
continuum of experiences, from the individual to the communal, and they bring
into focus the paucity of technological practices and concems. Running as an
individual activity is embodied and physical, unifying the mind and the body; no
technologically mediated activity can replace the authentic reality invoked when
running through the woods or along the shores of a lake. When the runner runs
they exp and their skills, and they experience a unit y of "achievement and
enjoyment, of competence and consummation" (TCCL: 203). There is a unity of
ends and means, labour and leisure, and that is a preeminent example of what
Borgmann means by a focal practice. He even c1aims that such activities "take us
117
to the limits of our being" and even "further to the point where in suffering our
limits we experience our greatness too"(TCCL: 204). He goes so far as to suggest
that such practices allow us to experience the divine and to "escape technology,
metaphysics, and the God of the philosophers and reach out to the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"(TCCL: 204). This is a first intimation that
Borgmann's solution to technology, his articulation of focal practices and of focal
things, is a religious one.
Borgmann's discussion of the practices involved in celebratory food
preparation and ingestion is even more resonant ofa religious event - for him it is
the focal practice 'par excellence.' In his eloquent discussion of the culture of the
table Borgmann believes that the festive meal, or even a daily 'great' meal,
centers our lives by "joining simplicity and cosmic wealth" (TCCL: 204). It
brings together the family with the abundance of nature, it represents tradition and
culture, it provides a cheri shed focus for communal Iife by being a "principled
and skillful enterprise of defining and satisfying human needs" (TCCL: 205). The
technological form of eating, that of fast food and micro-waved dinners, claims
convenience but offers only the shallow commodification of a necessary and
potentially liberating daily event.
The narrow focus on consumption the technological paradigm imposes is
countered by the extended meanings invoked in the preparation, satisfying
ingestion of and celebratory atmosphere the communal meal represents. For
Borgmann, the communal festive meal can be the modem secular equivalent of
the Christian eucharistie meal, though with important and signifieant differenees.
118
These differences clarify what Borgmann understands as the difference between
historical religion and the place of religion in technological culture, as the reason
why technology is not an adequate substitute for religion proper, and also how his
solution is inherently a religious one. However, this can only take place once we
reevaluate what meaning itself can truly be, how we access and process
information, and when we return from the false world oftechnology to reality.
4.5 The End of Reality
In the 1990's Borgmann authored two books, Crossing the Postmodern
Divide (CPD: 1992) and Holding Onto Reality (HOR: 1999), in which he
addresses how the pattern of the device has led us so far away from rea1ity that the
real itse1f has become a contested and controversial domain. In the first work
Borgmann describes the development of modernity as an increasingly rapid
movement away from engagement with reality due primarily to the foundations of
the modem project: ''the domination of nature, the primacy of method and the
sovereignty of the individual"(CPD: 5). For Borgmann, postmodernism, in both
its academic forms and materia1 practices such as in art and architecture, is a
'weak' and 'ambiguous' critique ofthese foundations. Rather, postmodemism is
the apotheosis ofmodemity's inherent presuppositions and a "direct descendent
of modem technology" only in an obsessively uncontrolled and extreme fashion.
Hence, in Borgmann's view, what is normally understood as postmodemism may
more accurately be called "hypermodemism" (CPD: 6).
119
Hypermodernism is "devoted to the design of technologically
sophisticated and glamorously unreal universe, distinguished by hyperreality,
hyperactivity, and hyperintelligence" (CPD: 6). This hyper form of modernity is
apparent when postmodemism is understood as a reaction to the lifeless realism of
modemity the critique ofwhich leads not to any world beyond the modem, but
rather to an extreme version of it. Borgmann sees this actualized in the realm of
information technologies, particularly in the ubiquitous, and often hidden,
narratives and experiences of disassociated reality with regard to computer
technologies. The hyper-real universe can be seen in both the perpetuaI se arch for
a recreated, controllable 'virtual' reality and in the disengagement from physical
reality experienced by everyday users of computer technologies.
For Borgmann, the hyper nature ofhyper-modemism is due partly to the
exponential increase in intensity and quantity of information related to both work
and leisure, which makes the reality ofboth increasingly inaccessible. To this
extent "information processing attains its hypermodern exaggeration to the extent
it overcomes and displaces tangible reality" (CPD: 82). In this sense, the hyper
real is a realm of increasing levels of abstraction moving farther and farther away
from the real but which is masked by its equally increasing ability to simulate that
self-same reality.
The second work, Holding Onto Reality: The Nature of Information at the
Turn of the Millenium (1999), is an in-depth philosophical response to the world
ofhyperreality which is both embodied in, and spread by, information
technologies. In this work, Borgmann takes on information theory in order to
120
counter cyberspace enthusiasts and popular narratives about the benefits of easy
access and availability of information through computer mediated technologies.
Borgmann's philosophical response is based on an understanding of information
as a form of mediation between human beings and reality. Information, in
Borgmann's phenomenological analysis, is removed from a direct experience of
reality and instead is the experience of signs which point towards aspects of
reality (HOR: 17). Signs are about sorne thing - they carry information and our
experience is with the ways in which we receive this information and the context
in which it arises. In this sense, information is always a mediated way in which
reality is perceived, represented and transformed through signs. However,
according to Borgmann, not an forms of mediation are equal and, therefore, not
aIl forms of information are good. He identifies three types of information:
natural, cultural and technological. Natural information is attuned to the
environment and it is revealed through signs that arise from reality (i.e., clouds,
smoke and animal tracks) without the imposition ofmeaning from human beings.
Natural information is mediated only through our embodied and engaged first
hand experience of reality and the context is one in which the signs which arise to
represent reality are directly referential to the things themselves. For Borgmann,
natural information is typified by the experiential cosmology of native Americans
and other nature-oriented traditional cultures where reality speaks and hum an
beings listen. (HOR: 24-29)
Cultural information is when reality is represented by signs that are
abstracted or taken out of the natural world. It is the representation of information
121
in signs such as written language - whether linguistic or mathematica1- and is the
actualization ofinfonnation into concrete material fonns (HOR: 38-46). For
Borgmann, "while natural information is about reality, cultural information is
distinctively for the shaping of reality"; these are the ways in which human beings
have traditionally experienced and interacted with reality prior to modernity
(HOR: 57). This is the world of the imagination, where the possible can be
explored in writing and signs before being made actua1; this is infonnation
realized, and the "paradigmatic kinds of such realization are reading, perfonning,
and building."(HOR: 85)
Cultural infonnation is one step removed from reality, but in its attempt to
both reflect and transfonn reality, it has the potential to bring one closer to the
real. This is the main benefit of such practices as reading, music and sorne fonns
of art: they provide a definitive shape and structure to reality but one which
engages our authentic existential needs. While cultural infonnation both
transfonns and illuminates reality, the inherent ambiguity of signs and symbols
means that "when meaning began to decline early in the modem era, the profuse
ambiguity of natural things and works of art came to compare poorly with the
austere definition ofprinted infotmation" (HOR: 114). This shift "from the
presence of things to the reference of signs, from meaning to information" gave
birth to the world in which technological infonnation dominates (HOR: 114).
While he doesn 't explicitly say 50, it is c1ear that for Bargmann the warld of
cultural infonnation is also the world ofhistorical religion - where religion was
once able to illuminate and reshape reality by providing a symbolic order in
response to human needs.
122
Technological information is an extreme outcome of the hope that cultural
information creates accurate maps and descriptions ofreality. Whereas natural
and cultural information respectively reflect and reshape reality, technological
information attempts to effectively replace reality with a near perfect
representation. Its accuracy allows technological information to be successfully
manipulated, and it is why information can itselfbe 'processed' to become useful
applications and tools. "Technological information holds the promise that, if
properly linked with reality on the input side, the rigor of its algebra will
faithfully preserve and process meaning and yield reliable and valuable
information on the output side" (HOR: 166). While such a promise may at first
appear to offer a reality which can be engaged even more fully than in its natural
or cultural forms, it in fact does the opposite, it replaces our experience of reality
with information about reality. As Peter-Paul Verbeek notes, this understanding
of technological information is one in which it is "parasitic on reality itself and
fails to engage us"; hence, for Borgmann, "technology makes information
available, but strips it ofits tie to reality." (Verbeek, 2002: 74)
Borgmann's critique is not merely a semantic corrective about the
meaning and significance of information in regards to its technological
manifestations. His concem is with the 10ss of meaning found in technologically
obsessed modemity. This 10ss is no more apparent than in that ambiguous and
problematic perspective on contemporary culture which has come to be called the
123
post-modem. According to Borgmann, the relativism and ambiguity
characteristic of the postmodem position has brought about a crisis in meaning.
In Crossing the Postmodern Divide (1992) Borgmann advocates not a retum to
pre-modem forms of engagement with reality, but rather he desires to 'cross'
from the extreme and enfeebling tendencies of the post or hyper-modem to what
he caUs a post-modem realism. Post-modem realism is a devotion and orientation
where "in a finite world, devotion to one thing will curb indulgence in another
[ ... ] it is an orientation that accepts the lessons of the postmodemist critique and
resolves the ambiguities of the postmodem condition in an attitude of patient
vigor for a common order centered on communal celebrations" (CPD: 116). The
anthropocentrism of the post-modem critique in which reality disappears in an
extreme relativism must be leavened with a focus on eloquent reality as it is
experienced and expressed by communal participants. This 'focal reality' is
represented by those "encounters each ofus has with things that ofthemselves
have engaged mind and body and centered our Iives"(CPD: 119). Not
surprisingly, Crossing ends with a paean to the reality embodied in the communal
celebrations of the Christian church. Borgmann even goes so far as to claim that
the communal and focused engagement with reality which he sees embodied in
religion is that which "the postmodern spirit, the holy spirit, caUs us to do." (CPD:
146)
Borgmann's prophetie cali is ev en more apparent in Holding onto Reality
whose final section entitIed "good news" promotes the gospel that once humans
begin to "right the balance of signs and things," the potential for a true salvation
124
from this-worldly mi sery will once again be made available for all humanity
(HOR: 228-233). Holding's final words use Christians as an example of the fact
that what "fidelity to persons and festive things they possess [is due] to a strong
reading of cosmic contingency - the history of salvation" (233). Necessary to
Borgmann's recommended solution is that it requires strength, loyalty and regular
manifestations of celebratory focal practices to bring substance, moral gravity and
material density back into our reality but with an eye towards their ultimate or
final reality (232, 233). More significantly, the fact that possible forms of
"constructive responses are manifold" is not a divisive issue or "a matter of
contestation but of attestation." (233 - more on this in the conclusion)
Borgmann's primarily theological articulation regards the testimonial
power of religious attestation to be found in holy writ, particularly the Christian
bible, and the ultimate reality in the promise of a day of judgment after which "all
of us will be remembered and more; our souls will be rocked in the bosom of
Abraham."(233) Borgmann's eschatological position counters the false gospel of
technology and its broken promises with that of another gospel- the Christian
gospel and its narrative of salvation in the next world.
Charles Ess, in his contribution to a special issue of the Society for
Philosophy and Technology journal Technë on Borgmann's Holding onto Reality,
clarifies the fact that Borgmann' s work contains both a prophetie and an
apocalyptic religious caU (2002: 29) Its prophetie stance is apparent in
Borgmann' s affirmation of an embodied engagement with material things,
practices and communal activities. It is apocalyptic when, while rejecting the
125
anti-realist transeendenee of eyberspaee, he puts forth a "dualism that pits the
evils ofthe world (in Borgmann's argument, the dangers ofhuman and moral
dissolution in eyberspaee) against a salvation in an afterlife" (29). This view, as
Ess notes, pits the prophetie, this-worldly and engaged against the apoealyptie and
otherworldly. In Ess' estimation, this "threatens to realign Borgmann
philosophieally with preeisely the modem and postmodem positions he is most at
pains to critique and overeome"(39). Borgmann agrees entirely with Ess'
analysis: in his response to his erities in the same issue of Technê, he states that
"1 endorse the reading of Holding that Ess advances as the principal one," but
with the caveat that he eonsiders his position to be "halfway between the
prophetic and the apocalyptic traditions"(l 13-1 14). While other philosophers of
teehnology, such as Ihde and Feenberg, may take great pains to maintain that their
solutions to the technological is in line with a rationalist, secular pro gram
Borgmann's solution is unapologetically religious - but not in a way we would
normally understand religion or technology.
Borgmann's response is not surprising; he has never hidden the fact that
the only adequate response he sees to the negative effects of technology is for him
a religious one. He sees the philosophie al problem oftechnology as essentially
metaphysieal, though not "metaphysieal insofar [as] 'metaphysieal' means
necessary or universal" (2002: Ill). Rather, it is a historieal issue dealing with
contingent reallty, and it attempts to answer the question ofwhat kind ofworld
we wish to live in - this is often referred to as the 'seareh for the good life.' The
question ofmeaning underlies Borgmann's philosophy, but it is with the eaveat
126
that "meaning is ultimately not a human projection or formation [ ... ] but the
eloquence of reality" itself (111). This requires not a retum to any traditional
religious or even philosophical theorizing where symbolic meaning is rationally
readjusted. Rather, it is an approach that accepts the ontological importance of
technology in shaping the modem world and one which cannot be escaped. This
requires that we cultivate new ways and means of practice; not merely new ways
of thinking or philosophizing.
4.6 A Religion of Focal Things and Practices or 'Something Like Theology'
[ ... ] the student oftechnology may also be led to something like theology. What a reflective tum to technology experiences readily, and finally in exasperation, is the endless variety and articulation of technology. Philosophers have in large part stayed away from an examination of modem technology for so long not because there is so little to say about it but too much. Since it is a novel and concrete phenomenon, the guidance of the tradition or of professional discipline is not available. The consequent disorientation affords a forceful invitation to reflect on questions of what really and finally matters, and such questions may open one to matters ofultimate concem. (PFa: 81)
Borgmann's insistence on the fundamental importance of speculations on
modem technology, both as concrete practices and as overarching systems of
meaning, is what makes 'the student oftechnology' to be led to 'something like
theology.' This was the literaI path of Don Ihde, moving from a divinity degree
to the philosophy oftechnology, but it is also a move Ihde's work ignores since he
prefers to look backwards to the 'guidance' of the philosophical tradition and to
reject the disconcerting possibilities of rethinking the very tradition of philosophy
itself. However, as Borgmann's work shows, this may be the only possible way
to adjust ourselves to the new dominance of technology in the contemporary
world.
127
In an article on the moral significance of material culture (1992)
Borgmann clarifies how philosophy in technological culture cannot operate as it
once did. The eliding of considerations ofpractice has been a part ofWestem
philosophy since Plato and Aristotle: "in the beginning material reality was
thought to be the adversary and seducer ofphilosophy," and this continued
throughout European history (291). However, in regards to historical technology
manifested in what Borgmann sees as culturally informed structures such as
temples and cathedral s, practice and materiality achieved a sacrality that
contradicted this elision occurring through theory. This is one of Borgmann' s
clues to the necessity ofreinvesting our practices with a new sacrality, his
argument for new focal practices and things. This requires a transformation of
philosophy that takes material culture seriously.
As Pieter Tijrnes notes in his analysis of Borgmann 's work in the Dutch
volume on Arnerican philosophy oftechnology, Borgmann's examples of focal
things and practices from religious history are the most potent for clarifying what
he means by focality (Achterhuis, 2001: 24). When Borgman speaks of "ternples
and cathedrals" and "processions and celebrations" his understanding ofwhat
constitutes a thing and a practice are "the clearest and most appealing" (24). In
the old world where nature spoke and people listened, these practices and things
achieved a sacrality because they were marked off from the mundane aspects of
civilization and culture not because of their symbolic importance but because
128
these practices required a strong focal commitment. As Tijmes says, for
Borgmann, "where the device paradigm holds sway, the formative power of
religion is weak" (29). The old historical world of religion, and those traditional
ways and means we use to define religion, can no longer operate in the ways it
once did.
Borgmann discusses this in his early reflections on the possibility of a
theology of technology; he notes that "the passage through technology should let
us see beyond the ways in which metaphysics has informed" religion (1984: 37).
This is why he does not advocate new theologies, theories or philosophies but
rather new counter-practices - concrete and material ways and means of doing
things that can counterthe 'entrenched and concealed' nature of modern
technology. This is why he caUs for a new Christian practical theology, a caU that
many other religionists have echoed, which makes room for new focused and
committed approaches to our technologically constrained practices. He even feels
that it is this "intuitive appreciation of this truth" that has led the popularization of
Asian religious practices, such as Buddhist meditation and Hindu yoga, in modern
culture. (1984: 321)
Borgmann does not believe that there can be any return or revitalization of
traditionally understood religion in its metaphysical or even its symbolic-system
sense. Historically focal practices were often "established through the founding
and consecrating of act of a divine power or mythic ancestor," and these sacred
practices became so by regular reenactment that renewed and sustained the
mythic order (TCCL: 207). This is how Borgmann understands the origins of
129
Christianity and the central event of the eucharistie meal which has had su ch a
"centering and orienting force" throughout Christian history (207). In contrast,
technology has no founding event, though there are many important moments,
and it has no founder or mythic human around which a true religion could arise.
Unlike what the 'religion oftechnology' thesis would claim, modem technology
is not a religion because it cannot provide what religions historically once did.
For Borgmann, traditional religions have succumbed to technology and
cannot be resacralized or reclaimed from technology. In fact, any attempt to
"somehow approve or adjust them so that they better meet the requirement of
society" would be a manifestation of the device paradigm itselfby trying to
control and contain them with it (PFa: 126). For example, in his analysis of
contemporary Christianity, Borgmann notes that the ontological status of the
sacraments has been fundamentally altered by technology - making them into no
more than commodities like any other device. Technology has made them
"instantaneouslyand easily available," and the transformation from the real to the
virtual wrought by information technologies has reduced them to insignificance
(PFa: 126-127). This is even more so with regards to the status that religious
literature, texts and books now have in the new information economy: their
commodification and reduction to mere devices means they no longer have the.
power they once had to focus meaning and significance - though admittedly, for
only a small proportion of society that could read and use these texts. Religion as
traditionally conceived is no longer operative as religion.
130
Since historical or traditional religions cannot operate as they once did
new religiously inspired fonus of practice must be developed. The new approach
Borgmann advocates can only be fully understood when categorized as religious
or at least as religious-like, even ifthis means a new understanding ofwhat
religion or religious practice is. Borgmann's des ire to reconnect meaning and
significance to focal things and practices is just not how religion is usually
defined.
Borgmann' s advocacy of this-worldly engagement as a kind of sacred
focus contradicts how religion is so often understood as being concemed with
otherworldly sacred meaning. When understood as concemed with the
transcendent or ultimate, religion implies a disengaged and non-practice oriented
meaning. Borgmann's this-worldly interpretation of engaged practices as religion
stands in direct opposition to this. When the nature of religion is understood
. primarily as practice all those elements used to understand religion must be
jettisoned - inc1uding questions ofbelief. Historically, and even today, escapism
and non-worldly engagement have been understood as a large part of what
religion is. Monasticism and asceticism, which are fundamentally rejections of
this-worldly concems, have manifestations in virtually every religion as
traditionally defined: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and aH the Abrahamic
traditions have long histories ofhuman beings explicitly attempting not to be
engaged with the day-to-day mundane. In fact, this otherworldly understanding
of religion and religious belief is so much a part of what we mean by religion that
Borgmann's call is hard to understand as religion.
131
In his analysis of Borgmann's work, David Strong makes exactly this
point wh en understanding Borgmann's caU as a religious one. Throughout his
work, Borgmann always seeks to make common cause with non-religionists and
ally his analysis ofpractices to secular and non-religious ways ofbeing. It is part
ofhis argument that it is now necessary to do so: we must "strengthen reverence
and piety wherever we find it" whether it be in environmentalism, aesthetic
appreciation, and even the natural wonder of the sciences (PFa: 127). He uses
examples of communal celebration which are entirely secular, such as sporting
events or outdoor music concerts, as weIl as the daily practices of food
preparation that he caUs the 'culture of the table.' His examples of the long-
distance runner or lone fly-fisherman are also meant to bring to the foreground
how these focused and engaged practices have an inherent religious attitude
which arises from their practice and cultivation. However, as Strong points out,
If this is a religious attitude, and if building one' s life around things of commanding presence - things more and other than oneself rather than at one's disposal- is a religious life [ ... ] then Borgmann's vision here is deeply religious. Still 1 hesitate to call it that because it is so radically different from any received understanding of religion. (Higgs, 2000: 336)
Even if Strong agrees that there is a genuinely qualitative difference in the pursuit
of these practices he does not want to make the leap to understanding them as
religion; despite the reverential and celebratory nature of these experiences he
wants to see them as something completely new and, he believes, so does
Borgmann. Quoting from Technology and the Character ofContemporary Life
where Borgmann's discusses the possibility oftransferring old, religious notions
of the divine from religion to nature from, Strong stresses Borgmann' s point that
132
these outmoded concepts and practices are too lifeless to revive (190). Instead, he
promotes Borgmann's claim that it is time to leam anew how to cultivate and
recognize "something as other and greater than ourse Ives" and also the virtue of
letting things be in their 'splendour' rather than attempting to reduce them to our
wants and needs (Higgs, 2000: 336). Strong and other of Borgmann's
philos op hic al followers are articulating the philosophical groundwork of a
contemporary religious approach to understanding and coping with the meaning
of a technological world.
133
Conclusion
The above discussion ofBorgmann's analysis oftechnology as a new,
non-:-traditional, technologically shaped religiousness may help c1arify why
contemporary technological practices have been characterized as essentially
religious in nature. It helps to explain the seemingly obscure, yet surprisingly
common, dec1arations regarding our relationship to technology in terms of faith or
religion. Through Borgmann's work one can see how technology may be
conceived as operating as a religion. More significantly, his work suggests how
traditional forms of religion in the modem world have become simply another
form and shape of the technological worldview.
Borgmann's calI for redemptive focal practices and things to combat the
negative effects of living in a technological culture are helpful for developing a
new way to study religion. The biggest benefit of Borgmann's analysis for the
development of a philosophy of religion is a refocusing on the material and
practical reality of technology, and thus, for understanding the place and meaning
of religion in technological culture. Utilizing such tools as the difference between
device and thing, between focus and commodity, we can develop a philosophical
appreciation for the technological reality of contemporary religious practices.
In Ihde's work we find a recognition of the inherently mediated nature of
both religion and technology: both are ways in which human beings experience
and interpret their environment. He also acknowledges the ways in which
technology has now replaced religion as the primary way in which those
134
experiences are mediated. This is the reason behind his methodo10gica1 use of
hermeneutics, an originally theo10gica1 too1 that arose as a way to rethink faith in
modemity and has become a path through which the existentia1 meaning of
human being can be thought. Thde's focus on the nature of embodiment suggests
100king at the ways in which religion techno10gically mediates our embodied
experiences in contemporary techno-cu1ture. This understanding would help to
consider the significance of formerly religious practices such as meditation,
prayer and yoga that take on seemingly secular status as well as the ways in which
techno10gical practices and goals appear to echo a religious meaning. Religion
remains, but it is based upon techno10gica1 rather than re1igious foundations.
There is a similar suggestion in Borgmann's work regarding the ways in
which the Christian sacraments and other religious practices have been subsumed
within the 'device paradigm.' He sees traditional religious practices as
succumbing to the technological demand to be ubiquitous and immediately
avai1able through the impact of new information technologies. This leads to the
situation whereby traditiona1 religion has been commodified and no longer has the
power to focus on a way that gives meaning and significance to human existence.
Along with this is the change in technologica1 culture in regards to what was once
considered sacred. Those spaces that echoed a transcendent or sacred order, such
as the temple or the church, no longer stand out as a focus for meaning and have
been reduced to just another place, no different and no better than any other. We
must now tum to the more mundane realms of day-to-day practices and events in
135
order to find ways to combat the negative potentials of technological development
and, perhaps, to promote their redemptive potential.
Ihde's tantalizing suggestion of a 'secular spirituality' that takes technics
as the central theme of investigations and Borgmann's des ire to cultivate those
focal practices and things which reinvigorate our technological world with
meaning is an invitation to read other praxis-oriented philosophers oftechnology
with an eye towards religion. One of the benefits of doing this is in helping to
untangle sorne of the confusions in Ihde's and Borgmann's work regarding the
status of the modem in technologically oriented global culture. Both Ihde and
Borgmann struggle with the idea of a beyond to modernity - the so-called
'postmodern' - as a way to cope with the indeterminacy and relative nature of
meaning which has arisen partly due to the advent of technologically
interconnected global culture. This struggle also lies behind their rejection of the
transcendental or essentialist interpretations of technology.
Borgmann rejects what he understands as technological postmodernism's
inability to ascertain truth or the 'real' by advocating a new way of ascertaining a
thinking that does not rely on the old metaphysical foundations of Western
thought; foundations which, as he notes, are still operative in contemporary
philosophy and the social andphysical sciences. Instead, he deems it necessary to
cultivate a method that focuses on the patterns and paradigms that structure our
understandings of reality. The kinds of discourse which used to prevail as
authoritative ways ofunderstanding, Borgmann identifies as 'deictic' - wherein
the focus of analysis is to illuminate sorne general or specific truth about the
136
subject (TCCL: 72, 176-78). However, these have now become outmoded and
even dangerous ways to approach the study of societies, cultures and individuals,
as witnessed by the explosion of conflicting and combative interpretations of
meaning in almost every academic discipline. Borgmann instead argues for a
'paradeictic' approach, one which iIluminates generally rather than focuses a
distortive spotlight on any particular subject. This method means rethinking what
we mean when something is said to represent an 'ultimate concern' which,
especially when it is used to understand what is religious or not, tends to "give the
appearance of laying down necessary conditions that determine in advance" what
can actually count as an ultimate concern (TCCL: 72, 176). As weIl, Borgmann
notes that su ch "procedure is also misleadingly abstract and may suggest an
ultimate concern has essentially ideal and intangible character" (176). He
advocates a mode of discourse that "embodies an attitude" of"enthusiasm,
sympathy and tolerance"; hence, "something is of ultimate con cern if it is divine
in a catholic sense, if it is greater and more enduring than myself, a source of
guidance and of solace and of delight" (176-77). This is one of the reasons why
he seeks common cause with environmentalists, artists, other religionists and aIl
those whose concerns are larger and greater than themselves. As weIl, because an
ultimate concern is so fully engaging and has so many dimensions, it is possible
to "faH short of it or even be mistaken about it." This is why it is possible that
another person may "speak more appropriately about ultimate concern" or
disc\ose "one that is greater" (177). Adopting such a method means rethinking
ways of convincing others of the rightness or truth of any position or stance. This
137
is especially significant for identifying and negotiating religion in its global and
cross-cultural manifestations in modem technocultures.
One ofIhde's answers to the unifying and distortive tendencies is to focus
on the ways in whieh technologies become actualized in their multiplicity rather
than in their uniformity cross-culturally. He shows how throughout history
various cultures have adopted technologies to suit their own purposes and
meanings in ways their designers and the cultural milieu in which they were
created never intended (1990, 125, 146-49). This suggests not a singular
technological force reducing aIl global culture to one and the same, but rather the
creation ofa 'plurieultural' one (1993,30-1). This, against an understanding of
the modernization and techno10gization of global cultures as simp1y their
succumbing to a Westemization. To be sure, Ihde acknowledges the necessity of
understanding the ways in which Western thought and technologies impact other
cultures; but he suggests that technology's inherent mutability means rethinking
how that is so.
The problem with both Idhe's and Borgmann's attempts to negotiate the
'postmodern' is that they are reacting to a straw man that does not do justice to
the ways in which modernity continues to shape and form the world. Economie,
social and military events continue to operate within a modem paradigm that is
not in any way historically or philosophically beyond that which created the
modem world. Undoubtedly technology, especially in regards to the substantial
alterations of individuals and societies information and biologie al technologies
are bound to effect, has changed the world. Change itself is one of the
138
foundational beliefs of modernity; though it is usually interpreted as upward
evolutionary progress, it need not be understood so. This needs to be
acknowledged if we are to understand the ways in which the interactions between
religion and technology have been, and continue to be, mutually constitutive.
Another important caveat that we can garner from these philosopher's
work is that the nature of modem technology need not be determinative or one
dimensionalonly. This arises in Ihde's discussion of the multiple ways in which
technologies are adopted and utilized by non-Western societies. It is an insight
that another philosopher oftechnology, Andrew Feenberg, utilizes in order to
evaluate the ways in which modernity and technology are adopted and
transformed when they are introduced to new cultures. A brieflook at Feenberg's
hypothesis of' alternative modernities' and at the' critical theory of technology'
he develops to negotiate the questions raised by technology is illuminating for
articulating future philosophical approaches to the technology/religion
relationship.
In Feenberg's philosophy oftechnology developed in his Critical Theory
ofTechnology (1991, reprinted as Transforming Technology, 2002) and
Questioning Technology (1999) we find most clearly the defining confliet of the
modem between a dominating religionlmetaphysies and a free, seeular rationality.
Feenberg negotiates the conceptual abyss between Heidegger's analysis of
technology and that of Herbert Marcuse, and he develops a eritical theory which
is reminiscent ofthat ofthe Frankfurt School.
139
For Feenberg, ifmodemity is viewed only as a specifie way of
approaching reality that is imposed on individuals and cultures it would be
synonymous with the dystopian, technocratie system the metaphysical
interpretation of technology suggests. If we accept only a determinist
interpretation oftechnology, then modemity is defined by the application of
technical rationality to aIl realms ofhuman experience regardless of cultural and
individual differences. Technology would impose clearly defined sets of relations
which make aIl realms of human experience and their accompanying social
institutions conform to the ideology of technical rationality, thus limiting human
freedom to change and altering the conditions oftheir world. This is what
Feenberg understands to be the basic problem with Heidegger's description of
technology; this is also why he describes it and other substantive theories as being
'like religion.'
"[ ... ] wh en you choose to use technology you do not simply render your existing way of life more efficient, you choose a different way of life. Technology is thus not simply instrumental to whatever values you hold. It carries with it certain values that have the same exclusive character as religious belief. But technology is even more persuasive than religion since it requires no belief to recognize its existence and to follow its commands."(2003,ontine)
Here is another reference to the 'religion oftechnology' thesis, but one which
rejects such an interpretation of modem technology. Feenberg's understanding of
religious belief as being of an exclusive character echoes the deficient
understanding of religion discussed in chapter one and one that does not fit into
how religion has itselfbeen transformed by modem technology. Ifwe take
seriously the findings in regards to Ihde's and Borgmann's understanding of
140
modern technology as a form ofmaterial religious practice, then Feenberg's
comparison fails to appreciate the significance of the religious character
embedded within technology, which is also at the core ofhis own interpretation of
technology and its various cultural manifestations. Despite this critical blindness,
Feenberg's own theory oftechnology actually goes a long way to nuancing the
technological/religious relationship.
Feenberg's analysis oftechnology is an attempt to unify the two
seemingly oppositional positions of instrumental understanding and substantive
interpretation. These are not actually contradictory but represent two different
levels in the process oftechnologization. Feenberg's aim is to provide an
understanding of technology that takes into account how a technical artifact
becomes a useful instrument in a society while at the same time acknow1edging
that the forms of rationality that shape and form this process may not be universal
or only Western.
The first level is called 'primary instrumentalization' and represents
Feenberg's acknowledgement of the important contributions of the 'classical'
philosophers of technology for c1arifying our understanding of modemity. At this
level, Feenberg agrees with Heidegger by seeing how primary instrumentalization
can potentially reduce the entire world and all cultures to a single calculable
whole whose elements are aIl at the disposaI of technological interventions. The
second level is concemed with the constitution of the social system in which
primary instrumentalization takes place and upon which it is built. In order to
actually be either a technological system or even a technological device,
141
techniques must be integrated within a culture's beliefs and be compatible with
the techniques which already exist there. Only at this level sorne sort of
intervention can occur to counter any negative consequences of a particular
technology or of a specific technical way of doing things.
For Feenberg, technology and modernity can have other meanings. The
modem can be understood as a continuation of the eighteenth-century European
Enlightenment project of constructing a rational society, and technology can be
understood as both a determinate system that stifles freedom and a liberating way
in which individuals and cultures can effect changes in their worlds. He adopts
much ofhis critique oftechnology from both Heidegger and Marcuse, his own
former Ph.D supervisor and a former student of Heidegger himself. Much of his
latest work is an attempt to reinterpret the relationship between Heidegger and
Marcuse (2004, 2005), and his own theory of technology and of alternatives to
modemization owes much to a reconciliation between these thinkers. He
especially wants to show how Marcuse's analysis is an attempt to offer different
solutions to the problems raised by Heidegger: unlike Heidgger for whom ancient
technë and modem technology are irreconcilable, Marcuse wants to help affect
the transformation of modem technology into a new technë in which "modern
technë would once again incorporate ethics and aesthetics in its structure and
reveal a meaningful world rather than a heap ofraw materials." (2004: 73)
In Marcuse's analysis of the political structures of modern society in his
early article "Sorne Sorne Implications of Modern Technology" (1941) the
dangers of fascism and totalitarianism do not disappear with the Allied victory
142
after World War II; these political expressions were themselves merely
manifestations of the totalizing logic of modem technical reasoning. According
to Marcuse, totalitarianism continues to be a threat through the continued
development of a "technocratie" political state in which "technical considerations
of imperialistic efficiency and rationality supersede the traditional standards of
profitability and general welfare" (Marcuse, 1998: 65). From Marcuse's analysis,
Feenberg primarily takes the understanding that what was once understood simply
as class conflict in the old Marxist sense has now become reified in the
technological system. He sees in technocracy a social system that is the result of
the diminished form of rationality that places primary importance on technical
means over rational ends. The opposite of the top-down technocratic social
system is the bottom-up democratization of technological systems based on the
intervention and social effects of the actual users oftechnology. Feenberg's
cri tic al theory of technology is an attempt to revive modem democratic
institutions through a subversive rationality - along the way revising the
Enlightenment ideas that underlie both the problem and the solution - and a caB
for 'alternative forms ofmodemity.'
In his Alternative Modernity (1995) Feenberg discusses instances of
technologization in which the social norms of a culture are not only integrated
into the developmental process but also extended to the things created and not
only to the creation oftechnologies which incorporates betiefs or 'ultimate
values'; when we choose and utilize a technology (for example seat belts or locks)
the use itself maintains and enforces those beliefs. As Hans Achterhuis puts it, for
143
Feenberg "material technological interventions thus not only change the world,
but also instruct our moral behaviour and tell us which values are important. In
technological cultures they form an inseparable part of communicative processes
that contribute to the formation ofmoral consensus" (2001: 75). Technologies are
both the creators of cultural meaning and the mode whereby they are transmitted;
this is even more so for the religious meaning they create and convey.
Feenberg discusses two instances of cultural secondary
instrumentalization where the implementation of technological modernity has
been altered or changed by the desires and beliefs of the users: the French creation
of a national computer network, the Mintel system, and the response to
modernization in mid-twentieth century Japanese philosophy and literature (1995,
144-55 & 169-210). In both examples Feenberg shows how alternatives to the
totalizing logic of technologization are dependent upon issues related to specifie
cultural patterns of use and practice more than they are to a uniform rationality.
One ofhis examples ofmodernization in the Japanese context is the philosophy of
Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) who developed a philosophical response to Western
modernization that was distinctly Japanese and - something which Feenberg does
not mention - distinctly Buddhist. Through a reevaluation of the concept of
experience, one which was indebted to both a Japanese cultural aesthetic and Zen
Buddhist philosophy, a unity between subjective and objective understandings
was constructed by Nishida to create a unique response to modernity (Feenberg,
1995: 174-75). Nishida's response owed as much to a distinctly Japanese form of
reason as it did to the insights of Zen Buddhism on the meaning and nature of
reality. (see Heisig, 2001)
144
What Feenberg's analysis of alternative forms ofmodernity suggests,
when taken in light of the discussion regarding the religious nature of modern
technological practices and techniques, is that there needs to be new ways to
understand the process of globalization and cross-cultural instances of
technologization. One confusion in Feenberg's thought pertains to the
relationshiop of religion to culture. Obviously a rethinking of the meaning of
culture which takes into account the meaning of religion as material practice will
help to explain much about how technology operates in various milieus as a new
forrn of technological religion. Integrating the insights gamered from the work of
Ihde and Borgmann and applying them to instances of secondary cultural
instrumentalizaton requires a new philosophy of religion that takes into account
the material, immanent and quotidian reality of religion in technoculture. Such a
philosophy will have to renegotiate outdated and problematic theories of religion
in favour of a more complex understanding of religion subsumed in a
technological milieu. This requires a new approach to philosophy of religion in
which the symbolic-linguistic meaning of manifestations of religion are secondary
compared to understanding the material realm of religious and technological
practice.
145
Bibliography
Achterhuis, Hans (ed.). American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn. Trans. RP. Crease. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001. (Dutch: Van stoommachine tot cyborg: Denken over techniek in de nieuwe wereld. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Ambo bv, 1997).
Alexander, Brian. Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
Babich, Babette. "The Essence of Questioning After Technology: Techne as Constraint and the Saving Power": British Journal ofPhenomenology 30/1 (January 1999): 106-124.
Bambach, Charles. "Heidegger, Technology and the Homeland": The Germanie Review. 78/4 (Fa112003): 267.
Barney, Darin. Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2000.
Barney, Darin and Andrew Feenberg (eds). Community in the Digital Age: Philosophyand Practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004.
Bailey, Edward. Implicit Religion: an Introduction. London, Middlesex University Press, 1998.
Beaudoin, Tom. Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Ouest of Generation X. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998.
Bellah, Robert N. and Phillip E. Hammond. The Varieties of Civil Religion. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1980
Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1966
Bijker, Wiebe, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor J. Pinch. (eds.). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press, 1987.
Borgmann, Albert. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inguiry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984. - TCCL
- "Prospects for the Theology of Technology." In J.Grote and C. Mitcham, eds. Theologyand Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984: 305-45.
- "Communities of Celebration: Technology and Public Life": Research in Philososphy and Technology 10 (1990): 315-345
- Crossing the Postmodem Divide. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. -CPD
- "Cosmopolitanism and Provincialism: On Heidegger's Errors and Insights": Philosophy Today 36/2 (Summer 1992): 131-45.
"The Moral Significance ofMaterial Culture": Inguiry 35 (1992): 291-300.
"Finding Philosophy." In 0.0. Kamos & R. G. Shoemaker (eds.). Falling in Love with Wisdom: American Philosophers Talk About Their Calling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993: 157-160.
"Does Philosophy Matter?": Technology in Society 17/3 (1995): 295-309.
"The Meaning of Technology": World & 1 1113 (March 1996).
146
Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Tum of the Millenium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. - HoR
- "A Scarcity of Focal Things: Reply to Pieter Tijmes": Technology in Society 21 (1999): 191-199.
- "Contingencyand Grace in an Age of Science and Technology": Theology Today 59/1 (April 2002): 6-20
- "Response to My Readers." Technë: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. 6/1 (Fa1l2002): 110-25.
- Power Failure: Christianity and the Culture of Technology. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003. - PFa
- Real American Ethics: Taking Responsibility for Our Country. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Bradley, Arthur. "Deus ex Machina: Religion and Technology in Aristotle, Heidegger and Derrida": Comparative Critical Studies 2/1 (2005): 265-89.
Brasher, Brenda E. Give me that Online Religion. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.
Faith and Understanding. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
147
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of 'sex'. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Cowan, Douglas E. and Lome L Dawson (eds.). Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Davis, Eric. Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Infonnation. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Derrida, Jacques. "Faith and Knowledge: the Two Sources of 'Religion' at the Limits ofReason Alone." In J. Derrida and G. Vattimo. (eds.) Religion. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998: 1-78.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. "Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence" RAND paper P-3244 (December) 1965.
- What Computers Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
- "Between Technë and Technology: The Ambiguous Place of Equipment in Being & Time." In M.E. Zimmennan, (ed.) The Thought of Martin Heidegger. New Orleans: Tulane University, 1984: 24-35.
- Being-in-the-W orld: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.
- What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.
- "Heidegger on Gaining a Free Relation to Technology." In D.M. Kaplan (ed.). Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2004.
Dreyfus, H. & C. Spinosa. "Highway Bridges and Feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on How to Affinn Technology": Man and World 30/2 (April 1997): 159-178.
- "Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology and the Everyday": Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 23/5 (October 2003): 339-349.
Durbin, Paul. "Advances in the Philosophy of Technology? Comparative Perspectives." Techne: Society for Philosophy and Technology. 4/1 (Fall 1998): 6-24.
Ellwood, Jr., Robert S. Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modem America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Trans. John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1964. (Fr. La technique ou l'enjeu du siècle. Paris: Annand Colin, 1954.)
- The Technological System. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Continuum Books, 1980 (Fr. Le système technicien. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1977.)
148
- The Technological Bluff. Trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990. (Fr. Le bluff technologique. Paris: Hachette, 1988)
- "Technique and the Opening Chapters of Genesis." ln Grote and Mitcham's, (eds.) Theology and Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984: 135.
- "The Relationship Between Man and the Creation in the Bible." ln eds. Grote and Mitcham's Theology and Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984: 151-152.
- What 1 Believe. Trans. G.W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989.
Ess, Charles. "Borgmann and the Borg: Consumerism vs. Holding on to Reality": Technë: Journal ofthe Society for Philosophy and Technology 6/1 (FaU 2002)
Feenberg, Andrew. Critical Theory of Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
- Alternative Modernity: The Teehnical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995.
"Marcuse or Habermas: Two Critiques of Teehnology": Inguiry 39 (1996): 45-70.
Ouestioning Technology. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
"The Ontie and the Ontologieal in Heidegger's Philosophy of Teehnology: Response to Thomson": Inquiry 43/4 (December 2000): 445-450.
- Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- "Modernity Theory and Technology Studies: Reflections on Bridging the Gap." In T. Misa, P. Brey & A. Feenberg (eds.). Modemity and Technology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2003: 73-104.
- "Technology in a Global World." In R. Figueroa & S. Harding (eds.). Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology. London: Routledge, 2003: 237-265.
- "Active and Passive Bodies: Comments on Don Ihde's Bodies in Technology": Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology 7/2 (Winter 2003).
- "What is Philosophy of Technology." Lecture given at the University of Tokyo, Komaba campus, June 2003: <http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/komaba.htm> Accessed Feb. 8,2007.
149
- "Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of Technology." In J. Abromeit & W.M. Cobb (eds.). Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader. London: Routledge, 2004: 67-80.
- "Loo king Backward, Looking Forward: Reflections on the Twentieth-century." In D. Tabachnick and T. Koivukoski (eds.). Globalization, Technology and Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004:93.
- Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History. London: Routledge, 2005.
- Hellfire and Lightning Rods: Liberating Science, Technology and Religion. MaryKnoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.
Franklin, Ursula. The Real World ofTechnology. Concord, ON: House of Anansi Press, 1990.
Gerrie, Jim. "Was Foucault a Philosopher of Technology?": Technë: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology 7/2 (Winter 2003): 14-26.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984.
Grant, George. Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Press, 1969.
- Technologyand Justice. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Limited, 1986.
Harman, Graham. Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics ofObjects. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Co., 2002.
Hawkin, David 1. (ed.). The Twenty-first Century Confronts Hs Gods: Globalization, Technology, and War. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004.
Heidegger, Martin. "The Question Concerning Technology." In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. trans. W. Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977: 3-35. (German: "Die Frage nach der Technik" In Vartrage und Aufsiitze. Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1954. Also Die Technik und die Kehre, Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1962.)
- "Traditional Language and Technological Language." trans. W.T. Gregory: Journal of Philosophical Research 22 (1998):129-145.
150
- "The Thing." In Poetry, Language, Thought. trans. A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. (German: "Das Ding" in Vortriige undAufsiitze. Pfullingen: Neske, 1954.)
- "The Age of the World Picture." In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. trans. W. Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977: 115-154.
- "Overcoming Metaphysics." In The End ofPhilosophy. trans. J. Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.(German: "Überwindung der Metaphysick." In Vortriige und Aufsiitze. Pfullingen: Neske, 1954.)
- Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit. trans. J. Stambaugh. New York: SUNY Press, 1996. (German: In Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2: Sein und Zeit ed. F.-W. von Herrmann, 1977, XIV, 586p.)
- "Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger." Trans. M. Alter and 1. Caputo: Philosophy Today (Winter 1976): 267-284. (German: "Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten": Der Spiegel23/30 [May 31, 1976]: 193-219.)
- The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heidegger. trans and commentary 1. G. Hart and 1. C. Maraldo. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976.
- "Memorial Address." Discourse on Thinking. trans. J. M. Anderson and E. H. Freund. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. (German: Gelassenheit. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959.)
Heisig, James W. Philosophers ofNothingness: an Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawai' i Press, 2001.
Hershock, Peter D. Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age. New York: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Hershock, P., M. Stepaniants & R.T. Ames (eds.). Technology and Cultural Values: On the Edge of the Third Millenium. Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.
Higgs, E., A. Light & D. Strong (eds.) Technology and the Good Life? Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Hottois, Gilbert. "Aspects of A Philosophy of Technique" Research in Philosophy & Technology 9 (1989): 45-57.
Ihde, Don. The Tragedy of Freedom: The Theme of Freedom in the Philosophical Theology of Nicholas Berdyaev. (M.Div) Newton Center, Mass.: Andover Newton Theological School,1959.
- "God and Sound": International Philosophical Ouarterly 10/2 (June, 1970): 232-251.
151
- Henneneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricouer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971. - HP
- "The Experience of Technology: Human-Machine Relations": Cultural Henneneutics 2 (1974): 267-279.
- Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1977.
- Technics and Praxis. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979. - TePr
- Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979.
- "Phenomenology and the Phenomenon of Technology" ln Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective. Ed. K.K. Cho. Dordrecht, Rolland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984.
- Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990. - TeL
- Instrumental Realism: The Interface between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Technology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
- "Image Technologies and Traditional Culture": Inquiry 35 (Summer 1992): 377-388.
- "Technologyas Cultural Instrument." In Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy. D.P. Chattopadhyaya, L.Embree, 1. Mohanty (eds.). New Delhi: Indian Council ofPhilosophical Research, 1992.
- PhilosophyofTechnology: An Introduction. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1993.PTe
- Postphenomenology: Essays in the Postmodern Context. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993. - PPh
- "Why Not Science Critics?": International Studies in Philosophy 29/1 (1997): 45-54.
- Expanding Henneneutics: Visualism in Science. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999.
- "Technoscience and the 'other' continental philosophy": Continental Philosophy Review 33 (2000): 59-74.
- Bodies in Technology. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. - BoT
152
- "A Response to My Critics": Techne: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology 7/2 (Winter 2003): 110-17.
- "JfPhenomenology is an albatross, is postphenomenology possible?" ln Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality. Don Ihde and Evan Selinger (eds.). Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003.
- "Has the Philosophy of Technology Arrived? AState of the Art Review": Philosophyof Science 71 (January 2003): 117-131.
- "Postphenomenology - Again?" Working Papers from Centre for STS Studies, Department of Information & Media Studies, University of Aarhus, The Netherlands. 2003.
- "What Globalization Do We Want?" In D. Tabachnick and T. Koivukoski (eds.). Globalization, Technology and Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004: 75-91.
Inwood, Michael. A Heiddeger Dictionarv. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
iyi, Sevgi. "What Heidegger Wishes to Transcend: Metaphysics Or Nietzsche": Philosophical Inquiry 21/2 (Spring 1999): 87-92.
Jonas, Hans. The Imperative ofResponsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.
- "Toward a Philosophy of Technology." In D.M. Kaplan (ed.). Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Katz, Eric, Andrew Light and William Thompson. (eds.) Controlling Technology: Contempoary Issues. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003, 2nd ed.
Kapp, Ernst. Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik. Düsseldorf: Stem, 1978 (c.1877).
Kroker, Arthur. The Will To Technology and the Culture ofNihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche, & Marx. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004
Krüger, Oliver. Virtualitat und Unsterblichkeit: Die Visionen des Posthumanismus. Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 2004.
- "Gnosis in Cyberspace? Body, Mind and Progress in Posthumanism": Journal of Evolution and Technology 14/2 (August 2005): 55-67.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, (c. 1966) 1996, 3rd ed.
Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986 (c. 1979).
Leder, Drew. "The Rule of the Device: Borgmann's Philosophy of Technology": Philosophy Today 32/1 (Spring 1988): 17-29.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1964.
- "Sorne Social Implications of Modern Technology." In Technology, War and Fascism:
153
Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Vol. 1 D.Kellner (ed.). London: Routledge, 1998: 41-65.
Marx, Leo. "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept": Social Research 63/3 (1997): 16-44.
Matthews, Richard. "The Metaphysics of Appearance: Heidegger's Critique of Technology." The Cogito: Memorial University Newfoundland Student Journal ofPhilosophy. 2 (1991).
McLuhan, Eric. "Introduction." The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion. by Marshall McLuhan. (ed. E. McLuan and 1. Szklarek). Toronto: Stoddart Publ. Ud., 1999: xix-xx.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. New York: Random House, 1967.
Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews. Eds. Stephanie McLuhan and Daniel Staines. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 2005 (orig. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945).
Mehta, J.L. The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Midgley, Mary. Science as Salvation: Modem Myth and its Meanings. London: Routledge, 1992.
Mitcham, C. & R. Mackey (eds). Philosophy of Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology. New York: The Free Press, 1983 (c.1979).
Mitcham, C. & J. Grote (eds). Theologyand Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
154
Mitcham, Carl. Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy. Chicago, IL: The Chicago University Press, 1994.
Mosco, Vincent. The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962 (c. 1934).
Newman, Jay. Religion and Technology: A Study in the Philosophy of Culture. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 1997.
Noble, David F. America By Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise ofCorporate Capitalism. New York: Knopf, 1977.
- Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines, 1995.
- The Religion ofTechnology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit ofInvention. New York: Penguin Books, 1999 (c. 1997).
- Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002.
Pôggleler, Otto. The Paths of Heidegger's Life and Thought. Trans. John Bailiff. Trenton, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1997.
Polt, Richard. Heidegger: An Introduction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Pronger, Brian. Body Facism: Salvation in the Technology ofPhysical Fitness. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2002.
Rayner, Timothy. "Biopower and Technology: Foucault and Heidegger's Way of Thinking": Contretemps 2 (May 2001): 142-156.
Rojcewicz, Richard. The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006.
Roy, Rustum. Experimenting With Truth: The Fusion of Religion with Technology, needed for Humanity's Survival. Oxford: Pergamon Press, Ud., 1981.
Rutsky, R.L. High-Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Safranski, Rüdiger. Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
155
Schatzberg, Eric "Technik Cornes to America: Changing Meanings of Technology before 1930": Technology and Culture 47/3 (2006) 486-512.
Schuurman, Egbert. Technology and the Future: A Philosophical Challenge. Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1980.
- "A Christian Philosophicai Perspective on Technology." ln Eds. J.Grote and C. Mitcham. Theology and Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984: 107.
Selinger, Evan (ed.). Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006.
Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodem Intellectuals Abuse of Science. New York: Picador, 1998
Stahl, William A. God and the Chip: Religion and the Culture ofTechnology. Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1999.
- "Technology and Myth: Implicit Religion in Technological Narratives." Implicit Religion. 5/2 (November 2002): 93-103.
- "Venerating the Black Box: Magic in Media Discourse on Technology." Science, Technology and Human Values. 20/2 (Spring, 1995): 1-17.
Stengers, Isabelle. La vierge et le neutrino: Les scientifigues dans la tourmente. Paris: Seuil Publ., 2006.
Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press, 2005.
Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Trans. R. Beardsworth and G. Collins. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. (Fr. La technique et le temps, 1: Lafaute d'Epiméthée. Paris: Galilée, 1994.)
- "Derrida and technology: fidelity at the limits of deconstruction and the prosthesis of faith" ln T. Cohen (ed.) Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 238-270.
Stivers, Richard. Technologyas Magic: The Triumph of Irrational. New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1999.
Stump, David J. "Socially Constructed Technology" Inguiry 431 2 (June 2000): 217-224.
156
Thomas, J. Mark. Ethics and Technoculture. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987.
Thomson, Iain. "Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger's Destruktion of Metaphysics": International Journal ofPhilosophical Studies 8/3 (2000): 297-327.
- "From the Question Concerning Technology to the Quest for a Democratie Technology: Heidegger, Marcuse, Feenberg." Inquiry 43/2 (June 2000): 203-216.
- Heidegger on OntoTheology: Technology and the Politics of Education. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Tillich, Paul. The Spiritual Situation in our Technical Society. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988.
- Theology of Culture. Ed. R.C. Kimball. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
- The Encounter of Religions and Quasi-Religions. Ed. T. Thomas. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.
Veak, Tyler J. (ed.). Democratizing Technology: Andrew Feenberg's Critical Theory of Technology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006.
Verbeek, Peter-Paul. "Devi ces of Engagement: On Borgmann' s Philosophy of Information and Technology": Technë: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology 6/1 (Fall2002): 69-92
- "Material Hermeneutics." Technë: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology: 6/3 (Spring 2003): 91-96.
- What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Trans. Robert P. Crease. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
- "Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation": Science, Technology and Human Values 31/3 (May 2006): 361-380.
Weiner, Norbert. God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964.
Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1999.
White Jr., Lynn. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis": Science 155 (March 10, 1967): 1203-1207.
- Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
157
- Medieval Religion and Techno1ogy: Collected Essays. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978.
Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age ofHigh Technology. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Wrathall, Mark A. (ed.) Religion after Metaphysics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Young, Julian. Heidegger's Later Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Za1eski, Jeffrey. The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology is Changing our Spiritual Lives. San Francisco, CA: Harper Edge, 1997.
Zimmerman, Michael. Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics and Art. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Zorn, Diana M. A Hermeneutics of Technology: Don Ihde's Postmodern Philosophy of Technology. M.A. Diss. McMaster University, 1994.